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Lynn Nottage ’89MFA

By the staff | 11:37am April 25 2009

She pulled down a MacArthur “genius” prize two years ago, so perhaps it was just a matter of time until playwright Lynn Nottage ’89MFA scored a Pulitzer Prize. That time came this week, when Nottage’s Ruined scooped up the Pulitzer for drama. For her latest work, Nottage traveled to Africa, interviewing Congolese women who had been raped and brutalized by their country’s civil war. Though Ruined is based on Bertolt Brecht’s World War II classic Mother Courage and Her Children, Nottage—a playwriting lecturer at the School of Drama—rejected Brecht’s trademark technique of distancing audience from characters. “I believe in engaging people emotionally,” she told the New York Times.

Filed under alumnae, awards, milestones, School of Drama, honored
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