THEATER AWARDS: LET’S BE SENSIBLE

Theater awards in this country don’t make a lot of sense. One is aware that people have been saying this ever since “Oedipus the King” didn’t get the prize at the Theatre of Dionysus. For the American theater, it happens to be the truth.

Two news items brought the problem to mind. The first was the announcement that this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama had gone to August Wilson’s “Fences.” The second was an article about the Tony Awards broadcast, coming up June 10 on CBS. The show will have a new producer, Don Mischer.

Neither item was bad news. “Fences” is a well-knit script by a writer with something to say about the black man in America, exactly the kind of play the Pulitzer is supposed to honor. Mischer knows his business, having directed the Kennedy Center Awards broadcasts for the last eight years.

But each news item was also a reminder of how long it is taking to get our most important theater awards into alignment with the American theater as it exists.

Take “Fences.” After a two-year trek, Wilson’s play opened on Broadway March 26, starring James Earl Jones. Producer Carol Shorenstein reports that its Pulitzer Prize meant an immediate upturn in business, from $170,000 the previous week to $216,000. To bring a good play to the public’s attention--isn’t that one of the purposes of the Pulitzer?

Right. But why did it take so long?

“Fences” may be a new play to Broadway, but it’s not new to the American theater. Jones first performed it in April of 1985 at the Yale Repertory Theatre. This was followed by productions at the Goodman Theatre of Chicago; the Seattle Repertory Theatre; the GeVa Theatre of Rochester, N.Y., and San Francisco’s Curran Theatre.

The American Theatre Critics Assn. thought well enough of “Fences” last season to give it a $1,000 award. Its script was published by New American Library. It was eligible for a 1986 Pulitzer.

It did not win one. The award went to . . . nobody. The Pulitzer Board rejected the play selected by its drama panel (Robert Wilson’s “the CIVIL warS”) and no alternative had been suggested.

Now, a year later, “Fences” becomes worthy of a Pulitzer. Not because its script or its staging have been vastly improved. Wilson and his director, Lloyd Richards, say that the show is basically the same on 46th Street as it was in Chicago.

Ah, but now it is on 46th Street: convenient to Pulitzer headquarters, seeable by the Pulitzer Board, and bearing the cachet of a Broadway show. Technically, a play no longer needs a New York production to win a Pulitzer. Practically, I’m afraid it still does. Can you name a Pulitzer Prize show that hasn’t had one?

New York theater folk don’t see this as a problem. If a play has anything going for it, they say, it’s bound to show up in New York. I asked Carol Shorenstein about her experience with “Fences.” Was there anything inevitable about its New York production?

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I got to do it on Broadway because nobody else was interested. It had been peddled around the block. The Shuberts had lost money on August Wilson’s last play, ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.’ They weren’t anxious to do it. Nobody thought it had commercial potential.”

As long as a play’s chances for a Pulitzer depend on its chances in the New York theater market, this remains a national prize in name only. (Compare the Pulitzer for music, which can go to a new piece performed anywhere in the country.)

There are signs of change, however. This year’s drama panel cited two additional plays. (Again, it’s the Pulitzer Board that actually votes the award.) One of them was a prototypal New York show, Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound.” But the other came from resident theater: Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods,” in its Yale Rep production.

It’s also encouraging that the drama panel nominated “Fences” before it opened on Broadway on the strength of what panel members had seen of the play in Chicago and San Francisco. If the drama panel were expanded from three members to five, and its travel budget increased, the Pulitzers would be on the way to being a truly national prize.

It’s the same with the Tony Awards.

This annual Tony broadcast is the only exposure that the national TV audience gets to live theater, yet the Tonys don’t give the viewer an adequate picture of New York theater. Broadway, yes. Off-Broadway, no. Off-off-Broadway? You’re joking.

New York theater people are concerned about this. For Broadway these days offers very little but musicals--English ones at that. The reader may be surprised to learn the number of new American plays eligible for Tonys this year: Nine. (The nominations will be announced May 10.)

Venue, not excellence, is the bottom line for Tony eligibility. Tina Howe’s “Coastal Disturbances” is eligible, because it transferred from an off-Broadway house to Circle in the Square’s Broadway space. Horton Foote’s “The Widow Claire”--with its superb performances by Matthew Broderick and Hallie Foote--is not eligible, because it didn’t transfer from Circle in the Square’s small downtown house.

Wole Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman” is eligible, because it played upstairs at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Arthur Miller’s two new one-acts, “Danger/Memory,” aren’t eligible because they played in the Beaumont’s downstairs space.

“Musical Comedy Murders of 1940” and “The Nerd” are eligible, but not Simon Gray’s “The Common Pursuit,” one of the best-reviewed shows of the New York theater season.

Now, Broadway management has an interest in equating excellence with big theaters, but theater people know there’s no correlation at all. I asked Isabelle Stevenson, director of the American Theatre Wing, which invented the Tonys in 1947, whether the Tonys would ever extend their coverage.

“I want them to,” she said, surprisingly. “I’ve been arguing for it for years. New York theater isn’t bound by geographic lines, and we know we have to acknowledge that.

“But this is not the year to do it.”

That’s because this year’s Tony broadcast is the first in 20 years not to be produced by Alexander Cohen, the man who turned the Tonys into a big-budget TV show in the 1960s. There’s enough to do just getting the thing on the air.

But Mischer, the new producer, acknowledges the “responsibility” for the Tonys to recognize the rest of the New York theater. This year’s show may have a musical “Salute to Off-Broadway.”

Mischer is also thinking of offering scenes from the nominated plays: Jones in “Fences,” for instance. Cohen used to stay away from that because it wasn’t good TV. Mischer and Stevenson want the broadcast to be good TV, but also want it to be about theater.

All this sounds quite hopeful, but the muscle behind the Tonys belongs to the League of American Theaters and Producers, formerly the League of New York Theaters and Producers. The purpose of the broadcast is to beat the drum for the Broadway theater, not to call attention to the competition.

So don’t expect too much from next month’s Tony nominations or next year’s Pulitzers. Enlightenment may be dawning in regard to theater awards, but self-interest and provincialism will put up a fight. The trouble with evolution is that it takes so long.