Bruce Norris (playwright)
Encyclopedia
Bruce Norris is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actor and playwright associated with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Steppenwolf Theatre Company is a Tony Award-winning Chicago theatre company founded in 1974 by Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry in the basement of a church in Highland Park, Illinois. It has since relocated to Chicago's Halsted Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Its name comes from...

 of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. On April 18, 2011 Norris was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...

 for his play Clybourne Park. The Prize committee citation described the play as "a powerful work whose memorable characters speak in witty and perceptive ways to America's sometimes toxic struggle with race and class consciousness." Prior to its Pulitzer reception, the play won the Olivier Prize for "Best New Play" following its premiere at New York's Playwrights Horizons.

After graduating from Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 in 1982 with a degree in theatre he set out to become an actor. He performed at Victory Gardens Theater, the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre and on Broadway. His Broadway credits include David Hirson
David Hirson
David Hirson is an American dramatist, best known for his award winning Broadway comedies, La Bête and Wrong Mountain.-Biography:Hirson was born in New York City to actress, Alice, and playwright, Roger O. Hirson...

's Wrong Mountain, Wendy Wasserstein
Wendy Wasserstein
Wendy Wasserstein was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University...

's An American Daughter
An American Daughter
An American Daughter is a play written by Wendy Wasserstein. The play takes place in a living room in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.-Production history:...

, and Neil Simon
Neil Simon
Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...

's Biloxi Blues
Biloxi Blues
Biloxi Blues is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. The second chapter in what is known as his Eugene trilogy, it follows Brighton Beach Memoirs and precedes Broadway Bound....

. During this time he was also "hired and fired from a number of television pilots." These rebuttals led to his first play The Actor Retires. The Steppenwolf Theatre has produced the last five of Norris' plays.

Norris' verbally dexterous and fast-paced dramas are reminiscent of Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

's comically tragic plays, which contemplate the complexities of the American psyche and the family dynamic.

Plays

  • The Actor Retires (1992)
  • The Vanishing Twin (1996)
  • The Infidel (2002)
  • Purple Heart (2002)
  • We All Went Down to Amsterdam (2003)
  • The Pain and the Itch (2004)
  • The Unmentionables (2006)
  • Clybourne Park
    Clybourne Park
    Clybourne Park is a 2010 play by Bruce Norris written in response to Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun portraying fictional events set before and after the play and loosely based on real life events. The premiere took place in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play...

    (2009), world premiere produced January 29 - March 7, 2010 by Playwrights Horizons
    Playwrights Horizons
    Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit Off-Broadway theater located in New York City dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to the production of their new work....

    , New York, New York, with Frank Wood
    Frank Wood
    Frank Wood is the name of:*Frank Wood , Iowa State Senator from the 42nd District*Frank Porter Wood , Canadian art collector*Frank Wood , American actor...

    , Emmy nominee Annie Parisse
    Annie Parisse
    Anne Marie Cancelmi , known as Annie Parisse, is an American television, film, and theater actress, known for playing Alexandra Borgia on the television drama Law & Order, a role she played from 2005 until 2006 in 33 episodes. Parisse is also known for her role of Julia Lindsey Snyder on the...

    , Jeremy Shamos, Crystal A. Dickinson, Brendan Griffin
    Brendan Griffin
    Brendan Griffin is a former Irish Fine Gael politician. A national teacher by profession, he was an unsuccessful candidate at the 1969 general election. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael Teachta Dála at the 1973 general election for the Tipperary South constituency...

    , Damon Gupton and Christina Kirk
  • A Parallelogram (2010)
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