New York, (EFEUSA) .- The award-winning playwright and screenwriter John Logan (California, 1961), was recognized this Monday in New York with the Monte Cristo Award given by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center to an outstanding figure whose work has been impact on the theater industry in the United States.
The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, based in Connecticut, made the 19th edition of its annual gala in the Big Apple, with the support of actor and playwright Lin Manuel Miranda, to recognize the work of Logan, author of “Red”, his greatest success in the tables.
“Red”, which premiered in December 2008 in the city of London (United Kingdom), and which arrived in New York in 2010, where it was presented for a short time, rose with six Tony Awards (of seven nominations). them the one of Better work and Better direction for Michael Grandage.
The piece is about the painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970), one of the leading representatives of the so-called Abstract Expressionism and also won the Drama League Award for Best Production and Best Performance.
The piece has reached stages in Mexico, Chile, Japan, Venezuela, Spain or Dubai.
Logan, who was a student at the O’Neill Center and thanked the institution for its creative process, has said that creating a play “is a dangerous, exciting and nerve-racking experience.”
The executive director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Preston Whiteway, has stated that Logan represents “the best of the American narrative.”
He has also referred to Logan as a dramatist and screenwriter who “creates unique and transformative stories that touch our common humanity.”
Logan was born in San Diego, California, the third son of Irish emigrants and grew up between that state and New Jersey.
He was a successful theater writer for ten years in Chicago, before becoming a screenwriter, and his first work, “Never the Sinner”, was based on a true story, about two rich university students who kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old boy .
His next musical on Broadway is the adaptation of the film “Moulin Rouge” by Baz Luhrmann, which will be presented this summer with features prior to the official premiere from June 28.
In film, the American screenwriter has been a candidate three times for the Oscar, two of them for Best Screenplay for “Gladiator” (Ridley Scott 2000) and “The Aviator” (Martin Scorsese, 2004), and the third for the best screenplay adapted by ” Hugo “(Martin Scorsese, 2011).
Television is a screenwriter for Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful” series.
Founded in 1964, the award is named in honor of the New York playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, one of them posthumously, and the only playwright to have won the Novel in literature .
He introduced dramatic realism in American theater and his masterpiece is the drama “Long Journey to the Night,” considered one of the best works of the twentieth century.
The award, Monte Cristo, bears the name of the cabin where O’Neill’s parents and their children spent their vacations.
The Center, based in Connecticut, is dedicated to the development of new work and new voices in the theater and has previously awarded this prize to playwrights August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Edward Albee and Neil Simon, among the actors are Michael Douglas, Meryl Streep and Christopher Plummer and Lin Manuel Miranda and directors include Harold Prince and George C. Wolfe (EFEUSA).
