Bruce Norris, playwright. / Photo by Evren Odcikin / ACT
The 2011 Pulitzer Prize for drama has been awarded to "Clybourne Park" by Bruce Norris. The award was announced Monday.
The play premiered last year at Playwrights Horizon in New York and was staged at London's Royal Court Theatre. It was produced this year by American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.
Set on Chicago's northwest side, it looks at real estate and the politics of race. In it, a white couple sell their house to the neighborhood's first black family in 1959, sparking controversy in the community. Fifty years later, with gentrification in full swing, a white couple buys the house with plans to tear it down.
Pulitzer judges called "Clybourne Park" "a powerful work whose memorable characters speak in witty and perceptive ways to America's sometimes toxic struggle with race and class consciousness."
Norris, 50, and a resident of Brooklyn, is known as a provocateur. His winning play "features racist jokes, unspeakable contempt, and mental images that would make Mamet blush," said New York magazine, adding, "It's also a subtle and well-crafted piece of theater."
Norris is a longtime collaborator with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater, where many of his plays have been premiered or produced. Steppenwolf will open its fall season with "Clybourne Park" in September. Other plays by Norris include "The Infidel," "The Pain and the Itch," "The Unmentionables" and "We All Went Down to Amsterdam."
