The 2011 Pulitzer prize for Drama has gone to Bruce Norris. Nice to see that the Steppenwolf style still means something in the small cast, high concept world of today. I haven’t read, let alone seen the script that won (stupidly missed it in New York, and it has yet to be published in the U.S.), but the Bruce Norris shows which I have read or seen display what lit critics used to call “a trenchant wit.” His work can black- comic, politically astute, a real satirical assault on contemporary culture. Clybourne Park is about a racial divide in Chicago based on history, celebrity, the civil rights era and the white gentrification of ethnic neighborhoods. I can think of about a zillion ways that would be relevant to New Haven and Connecticut audiences, and I hope it gets staged around here soon.
I remember when my review ran of Yale Rep’s production of Norris’ The Unmentionables (a play which had its own fraught racial and cross-cultural tensions), I got a kind email from one of its cast members, which suggested that some audiences were having trouble with the piece and thanking me for hanging with it.
Well, now Norris is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a prolific playwright to boot. A lot of apprehensive audiences are poised to become willing followers. Great. Get used to Bruce Norris. We need him.