Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2021: Read a Play (Pulitzer Prize Winners 1990-1999)
- Ariel H.
- Thursday, April 01, 2021
Collection
Fulfill the "Read a Play" prompt with these 1990-1999 Pulitzer prize winners.
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2021 reading challenge. Find more lists here.
Proof
Published in 2001
An enigmatic young woman. A manipulative sister. Their brilliant father. An unexpected suitor. One life-altering question. The search for the truth behind a mysterious mathematical proof is the perplexing problem in David Auburn's dynamic play. Starring Anne Heche and Jeremy Sisto, Proof is a winner of the 2001 Tony award for Best Play as well as the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for drama.Includes an interview with Dr. Carrie Bearden, a Clinical Neuropsychologist and Assistant Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California-Los Angeles. Dr. Bearden is working to identify brain-based traits that may provide clues as to the underlying causes of psychosis and bipolar disorder. She joined us to talk about the role of heredity in mental illness and the links between genius and madness.Also includes an interview with Steven Strogatz, a professor at the Cornell University School of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics. Dr. Strogatz is the author of three books, including Sync and The Calculus of Friendship, and has authored a column on mathematics for the New York Times. Dr. Strogatz joined us to talk about popular stereotypes of mathematicians, math as a "young man's game," and the question of gender bias in the field.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:Anne Heche as CatherineJeremy Sisto as HalRobert Foxworth as RobertKaitlin Hopkins as ClaireDirected by Jenny Sullivan. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles.Proof is part of L.A. Theatre Works' Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.
Ana En El Trópico
Una Nueva Obra Teatral
Published in 2004
This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of America in the midst of the Depression. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect of the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.
Anna in the Tropics
Published in 2005
This poignant and poetic Pulitzer Prize winning play captures 1929 Florida at a time when cigars are still rolled by hand and "lectors" are employed to educate and entertain the workers. The arrival of a new lector is cause for celebration, but when he reads aloud from "Anna Karenina," he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics and the American dream prove a volatile combination. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance starring: Jimmy Smits as Juan Julian; Onahoua Rodriguez as Marela; Adriana Sevan as Conchita; Alma Martinez as Ofelia; Jonathan Nichols as Palomo and Eliades; Winston Rocha as Santiago; Herbert Siguenza as Cheche.
The Young Man from Atlanta
Published in 1998
In 1950's Houston, an affluent couple is transformed by tragedy when their son dies under mysterious circumstances and the husband loses his job of 40 years. Shirley Knight recreates her Tony-nominated performance in this 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Phyllis Applegate, Jamie Hanes, Shirley Knight, Lynne Marta, Ronan O'Casey, Daniel Passer, Kenna Ramsey, David Selby and Tom Virtue.
Angels in America
A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.
Published in 2014
A revised edition of one of the most influential plays of our time, published with a new foreword by the author.
Rabbit Hole
A Play
Published in 2011
Movie tie-in edition of the film from Lions Gate starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest. Life for a happy couple is turned upside down after their young son dies in an accident.
Dinner with Friends
A Play
Published in 2012
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for DramaOver the past decade, Donald Margulies has written some of the most insightful works in contemporary American drama. His body of work includes The Loman Family Picnic, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment and Collected Stories, and with each succeeding work his audiences have grown. It is no surprise that his newest work is his most critically successful yet. As with all of Margulies's work, he is a master of observing what might be considered the ordinary moments of life and its foibles with fresh ears. Dinner with Friends is a funny yet bittersweet examination of the married lives of two couples who have been extremely close for dozens of years. Although it seems to be treading on familiar ground, Dinner keeps changing its perspective to show how one couple's breakup can have equally devastating effects on another's stability.
Ruined
Published in 2009
Mama Nadi, the owner of a brothel set in Congo, is a mother figure who keeps watch over her business, serving men from both sides of the conflict, and employing women, "ruined" by rape or torture, who are forced to work as prostitutes.
Topdog/underdog
Published in 2001
A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori Parks latest riff on the way we are defined by history. The play tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future.
How I Learned to Drive
Published in 2015
Balmy evenings in rural Maryland are fraught with danger, and seductions can happen anywhere from a river bank to the front seat of a car, where a young self-conscious girl is learning to drive. To Li'l Bit, the radio is the most important part of the car, but the pop music of the 50's can never quite drown out the harrowing images in her mind.||An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Randall Arney, Joy Gregory, Glenne Headly, Paul Mercier and Rondi Reed.