I see that the Tony-winning musical NEXT TO NORMAL has won this year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama. I love when a musical wins this prize.
Cool! There used to be a theater group here in Olympia that did its own annual "Magic of Broadway" revue (very cheap to produce
). They ususally picked a couple of composers/song writing teams and did revues with their material. One year (this was in the late 1990s, very early 2000s), I was asked if I had an idea that they could do...something different than what they'd been doing. I suggested doing the musicals that had won the Pulitzer Prize for drama! They loved the idea. By this time,
Rent had won the award and was only the seventh musical to win. In doing research however, we found out that
Oklahoma! had won a special Pulizter Prize, so we felt justified in adding that to the revue so that we could have four shows per act because we could only use three songs per show. The
Oklahoma! section was used at the end of act I, and the title song was a great way to send people out for the intermission.
We wanted to add a little bit of dramatic context (short scenes before songs, when appropriate), but were told specifically that we couldn't use ANY dialogue before or after the
Chorus Line songs...no dramatic context at all. So, we didn't. We just sang those songs. I got to do the
Sunday in the Park with George songs. It was a lot of fun and a great success.
