A wrestler named The Rock makes $12 million to act in a movie, but the writer who wins the most lucrative playwriting prize in America pockets a cool $25,000.
What’s a guy to do with spoils like those?
“I’m buying furniture,” said Lee Blessing, who on April 1 was presented the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award at the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky.
It’s been a big couple of weeks for Blessing, 56. First he was commissioned by Denver Center Theatre Company artistic director Kent Thompson to write a new play as part of a future Colorado New Play Summit. Next came his award for “A Body of Water,” which premiered last year at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.
And next week he’s getting married, to fellow playwright Melanie Marnich, winner of the DCTC’s 1999 Francesca Primus Prize for writing “Blur.”
“Or it might be 10 days,” Blessing said from his soon-to-be former residence in Manhattan. “We don’t actually have a date. We’re going to be married at City Hall, and when we asked if you have to have an appointment, they said, Nah, you just show up.”
Since he’s moving to Brooklyn Heights, the cash couldn’t be more timely. “Marriage means I’ve got to get a little furniture, doesn’t it?” he asked.
Blessing’s commission and his prize can be traced directly to Jim Steinberg of Steamboat Springs, who is emerging as perhaps the leading champion of new work in American theater today.
Steinberg, a trustee for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, ponies up $40,000 for the critics award named for his parents. Another $7,500 went to runner-ups Adam Rapp (“Red Light Winter”) and the estate of August Wilson (“Radio Golf”). His foundation is also paying the DCTC $25,000 annually for the next three years to establish an endowment for ongoing commissions of new works.
In all, the Steinberg Foundation, the second-largest theater foundation in the country, pays out more than $2 million a year just for new works.
Blessing calls Steinberg’s work invaluable to the American theater. “After the National Endowment for the Arts was stripped of its ability to give individual grants to writers, theaters understood the need to put some money toward the commissioning of new plays, so that writers would be encouraged to write for the stage rather than concentrating on television and film,” he said.
“It takes encouragement from people like the Steinbergs, because this is a hard field to make money.”
Steinberg’s motive is simple: “If you don’t have new work,” he said, “eventually theater becomes a museum.”
But he doesn’t just write checks. He travels to New York eight times a year, attends Humana and other festivals, and supports other local theaters such as Curious.
Steinberg describes “A Body of Water” as “very strange, late 1960s, almost Beckett-esque in the way it asks basic questions about who we are, how did we get here, and what are we doing?” he said.
In the play, a couple wakes up in a strange house atop a mountain; they don’t know who they are. A woman visits over three days and fills in their biographies with disturbing stories.
“It’s an unusual play that really came out of my subconscious,” Blessing said. “It’s a very internal and visceral examination of what it feels like to be alive.”
At the recent Humana festival, Blessing found a lot to like in the six fully staged new plays, notably “The Scene” by Theresa Rebeck, who also has snared a DCTC commission. “It was marvelously funny, and it made me uncomfortable at the same time, which is the kind of humor I like,” he said.
Blessing heads the graduate playwriting program at Rutgers and just completed a three-week guest-artist stint in Boulder with the University of Colorado theater department. He’s often asked his best advice for aspiring writers.
“If there is one thing that surprises and disturbs me a little when I talk to young playwrights, it’s that they seem to confuse the trappings of success with the success itself,” he said. “They want to know how fast they can get an agent and how fast they can get their play published. But I wish they were asking themselves how quickly they can write a play that really makes a difference.
“In my experience, when a play is really strong, it tends to find its own way. A career in playwriting starts with writing a good play – and preferably more than one.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
