What do the plays Ruined and Driving Miss Daisy have in common? They both won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and both happened to have been written by graduates of Brown University (Lynn Nottage ’86 and Alfred Uhry ’59). I’ve been thinking a lot about Ruined after seeing it last Saturday and for some reason it made me think of Driving Miss Daisy today and then I stumbled on this interesting connection between them. (And just for good measure I should point out that another Brown graduate, Nilo Cruz, also won the Pulitzer in 2003 for his play Anna in the Tropics.)
In 2008 Nottage was asked by Alexis Green “Are you combining Activism and playwriting?”
“They are two passions. I feel it’s my social responsibility to shine a light on areas that don’t get seen. My personal feeling is that it’s an artist’s responsibility to be engaged with the culture. And when the culture is going through turmoil, I think an artist can’t ignore that. I don’t feel that every artist has to be politically engaged, but I can’t imagine that you can be an active participant of this culture and not in some way reflect that in the work you are creating.”
Lynn Nottage
League of Professional Theatre Women
To learn more about Nottage visit her website at www.lynnnottage.net.
[…] What do the plays Ruined and Driving Miss Daisy have in common? They both won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and both happened to have been written by graduates of Brown University (Lynn Nottage ‘86 and Alfred Uhry ‘59). I’ve been thinking a lot about Ruined after seeing it last Saturday and for some reason […] Original Source… […]