FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                   EDITOR AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS
May 5, 2004                                                                                Contact: Jeffrey Eric Jenkins (718-789-5553)

Pulitzer Prize Winners Honored!

Best Plays Released Today Includes Essays on Wife, Anna

THE BEST PLAYS THEATER YEARBOOK 2002–2003, 84TH EDITION

(New York, NY) — Two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays are honored in the 84th edition of The Best Plays Theater Yearbook released today (Limelight Editions, $47.50, 500 pages). During the 2002–2003 season, Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife opened at New York’s Playwrights Horizons and Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics received the Steinberg New Play Award after opening at the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Fla. Wright’s play received the 2004 Pulitzer, Cruz’s was honored in 2003.

        Publication of the book continues a tradition dating back to 1920, when Burns Mantle founded the annual series on United States theater. Recent reviewers have written: “No theater enthusiast should be without it.”* “Stylish commentary, which gives the reader a sense of the original production in addition to its literary merit.”* “It remains the smartest, most comprehensive . . . survey of American theater.”*

        Under series editor Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, the current edition honors 10 New York-based dramatic works and three plays from the resident theater while providing a collection of viewpoints on the season under review. It also offers an extensive compendium of facts and figures about the theater season in New York and around the United States.

        The Best Plays of 2002–2003 were chosen from Broadway, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway productions of new plays that opened between June 1, 2002 and May 31, 2003. The choices were made by Jenkins after consultation with the Best Plays editorial board, which includes Robert Brustein, Tish Dace, Christine Dolen, Mel Gussow, Robert Hurwitt, John Istel, Chris Jones, Julius Novick, Michael Phillips, Christopher Rawson, Alisa Solomon, Jeffrey Sweet, Linda Winer and Charles Wright. The United States resident theater is represented in new-play statistics and in essays by Christine Dolen, Claudia W. Harris and Alec Harvey on plays recognized by the American Theatre Critics Association in its Steinberg New Play Award and Citations competition.

        The Best Plays of 2002–2003 (in alphabetical order): Book of Days by Lanford Wilson (essayist, Tish Dace); Dublin Carol by Conor McPherson (essayist, Charles Isherwood); I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright (essayist, Julius Novick); Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron (essayist, Charles Wright); The Mercy Seat by Neil LaBute (essayist, John Istel); Our Lady of 121st Street by Stephen Adly Guirgis (essayist, Jennifer de Poyen); Stone Cold Dead Serious by Adam Rapp (essayist, Jeffrey Eric Jenkins); Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg (essayist, Christopher Rawson); Talking Heads by Alan Bennett (essayist, Jeffrey Sweet); Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith (essayist, Michele Volansky). Each of the Best Plays of 2002–2003 is illustrated by photographic highlights from the honored production.

Distribution of The Best Plays Theater Yearbook is generously underwritten
by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

* Reviews are available in full at http://www.bestplaysonline.com/

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