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Drama
Margaret Edson
An
article in The Washington Post (February, 2000) puts the meteoric rise
of Margaret Edson and her 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit about
as succinctly as the facts can be stated: "The paradox about Margaret Edson
is that she is not really a playwright. Edson herself has been saying so
ever since she became a celebrated playwright last season." Almost as surprising
given the success of Wit—it not only earned Edson a Pulitzer Prize,
but was also adapted by HBO in 2001 into a movie starring Emma Thompson—Edson
explained to Jim Lehrer in 1999 that she had no plans to write another play.
Instead, she plans to focus her attention on her "day job" as a kindergarten
teacher in Atlanta.
Margaret Edson (1961- ) was
born and raised in Washington D.C. After completing a bachelor's degree in
History at Smith College in 1983, she returned to Washington, where she worked
for two years as a clerk at a major research hospital in a unit for cancer
and AIDS patients. After working for a time as a grant writer and sales clerk
in a bike shop, she took the summer of 1991 off, beginning the work on a draft
that would eventually become Wit. She also earned an M.A. in English
at Georgetown University in 1992, and initiated her career as an elementary
school teacher in the Washington public schools before moving to Atlanta in
1998.
The stage history of Wit
provides object lessons in both persistence and the value of friendship.
As The Washington Post and Edson herself describe the evolution of
the play, the draft Edson completed in the early 90s was rejected by theater
companies "from coast to coast." In her interview with Jim Lehrer on PBS,
Edson explains that she sent the manuscript to "every theater in the country"
with no success until, in 1995, the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California,
accepted Wit for production in 1995. From there it moved to a number
of major venues—the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, for instance,
in 1997—and Off-Broadway in 1998 to a smaller house and, finally, in January
of 1999 to the Union Square Theatre in New York. A few months later she was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Edson credits a former high school
classmate, Derek Anson Jones, who directed the New York and touring productions
of the play, for finally getting the play produced on the East coast. She
recalls him carrying the script of the play in his backpack, shopping it to
repertory companies whenever the occasion arose. Finally, Doug Hughes, Artistic
Director of the Long Wharf Theatre, agreed to Jones' directing the play there
in 1997. Sadly, Jones succumbed to complications from AIDS in 2000.
Through this evolution, the text
of Wit has been revised several times; for example, Edson herself cut
the text by nearly an hour as the play was in production by the South Coast
Repertory in 1995. The version printed in Understanding Literature
is the 1999 text for which Edson won the Pulitzer Prize.
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Reading About Edson
Lehrer, Jim. "Love and Knowledge." April 14, 1999. . .ntertainment/jan-june99/edson_4-15.html.
Pressley, Nelson. "A Teacher's ‘Wit' and Wisdom," The Washington Post, February 27, 2000.
Pulitzer Prize Board. "The Pulitzer Prize Winners: 1999—Margaret Edson." www.pulitzer.org/year/1999/drama/bio.
Sack, Kevin. "Margaret Edson: Colors, Numbers, letters and John Donne." The New York Times, November 10, 1998.
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