"Shocked" Lindsay-Abaire Responds to His Pulitzer Win for Rabbit Hole

David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole has been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The award is made "for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life," according to the awards announcement. The Pulitzer includes a cash prize of $10,000.

Nominated as finalists in the drama category were Orpheus X by Rinde Eckert, Bulrusher by Eisa Davis and Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue by Quiara Alegría Hudes.

"I was sitting in my study, hammering out a lyric for the Shrek musical, when I got a call from [press agent] Chris Boneau saying, 'I think you just won the Pulitzer Prize,'" Lindsay-Abaire told Broadway.com. "I was shocked, of course! The play happened way over a year ago, and I thought,'They're not going to remember me.' I told my wife, and then the phone started ringing. I haven't even called my parents yet!" The playwright admits he'd heard Pulitzer talk from fans of Rabbit Hole, "but I pushed it from my head. You can drive yourself crazy thinking about this stuff. Of course, you look down the list of people who have won it and think, 'Damn, I'd love to be on that,' but I thought it would come later in life."

Nominators for the drama prize included Ben Brantley, chief drama critic of The New York Times chair; Kimberly W. Benston; Francis B. Gummere, Professor of English at Haverford College; Karen D'Souza, drama critic, San Jose Mercury News; Rohan Preston, theater critic, Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Paula Vogel, playwright and professor of English at Brown University and winner of the 1998 Pulitzer for How I Learned to Drive. Reportedly, the full Pulitzer board rejected the three finalists submitted by Brantley and his committee, and three-quarters of the voters joined together to give the prize to Rabbit Hole. "I don't care how I got it," Lindsay-Abaire said. "I'm just happy to get it."

Rabbit Hole opened on Broadway on February 2, 2006, at the Biltmore Theatre in a production directed by Daniel Sullivan and produced by Manhattan Theatre Club. It was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Play. Cynthia Nixon won the Best Actress Tony for her performance as Becca, a mother grieving over the death of her young son in an automobile accident. The Broadway production also starred Tony nominee Tyne Daly as Nixon's mother, John Slattery as her husband, Mary Catherine Garrison as her sister, and Spring Awakening's John Gallagher, Jr. as the teen who killed Nixon's son.

In January, Oscar winner Nicole Kidman announced that she will produce and star in a big-screen version of the play, with a screenplay by the author. "I'm about halfway finished with it," Lindsay-Abaire told Broadway.com of his Rabbit Hole script. "It's much more opened up, with many more locations [depicting] lots that is spoken about in the play that you don't see." He gave as examples Becca's grief support group and her suspicion that her husband might be having an affair.

In addition to Rabbit Hole, Lindsay-Abaire's plays include Fuddy Meers, Kimberly Akimbo and Wonder of the World. He wrote the book for the recent musical High Fidelity and recently adapted Cornelia Funke's novel Inkheart for the big screen.