First she was a certifiable genius — now Boerum Hill’s Lynn Nottage is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
The czars of the literary and journalism awards on Monday declared Nottage’s play, “Ruined,” the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
The judges called the play, which is set in a Congolese brothel, “a searing drama … that compels audiences to face the horror of wartime rape and brutality while still finding affirmation of life and hope amid hopelessness.
The play was “inspired” by the interviews Nottage collected for herself in Africa, she told The Brooklyn Paper on Tuesday.
“The play is about rape in the Congo, but it is a much more universal tale,” Nottage said. “It’s about people’s whose lives have been devasted and how they resurrect themselves during desperate times, like war. It’s about survival.”
As gripping as “Ruined” is, its brutal story didn’t detract from Nottage’s ability to enjoy her new honor.
“I do feel giddy and very excited,” she said. “It’s gratifying that sometimes when art and politics intersect, something beautiful happens. I felt such an urgency writing this play because these women’s stores weren’t reaching the world at large. What we hear from Africa are the statistics, the fragments, but we don’t see these women as three-dimensional human beings, as people who suffer.”
“Ruined” is currently running at the Manhattan Theater Club and has already been extended once, to May 10. Nottage said she’s optimistic that the Pulitzer will encourage producers to extend the run again.
Readers of The Brooklyn Paper always knew Nottage would make the big (and bigger) time.
Two years ago, when she won her MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant, Nottage joined fellow prize winners Mercedes Doretti of Clinton Hill and Joan Snyder of Park Slope in our first-ever, all-genius “smackdown.”
In the interview, we asked Nottage what she would work on next, thanks to the MacArthur grant. Her answer?
“I am actually getting ready to workshop a play in Chicago at the end of the week called ‘Ruined,’” she said.
Clearly, it turned out well.
