Newsday: He Has a 'Corner' on the Oppy

Peter Goodman

September 12, 2003

Tim Dowlin is broke. He doesn't have a job. How does he support himself? "That's a good question," he said.

How does the 24-year-old Philadelphian feel now that his first play, "Corner Wars," has won the $5,000 Newsday Oppenheimer Award, presented annually to the most impressive work by a playwright getting his first professional New York-area production?

"I'm still in the process of accepting it: 'How big is this? Is this real?'" he said by phone from his apartment in Brooklyn's DUMBO section.

It's real, and pretty big. Named after the late playwright and Newsday critic George Oppenheimer and marking its 25th year, the Oppy has put an early light on such writers as Tony winner James Lapine ("Into the Woods") and Margaret Edson ("Wit"). After graduating from Philadelphia's arts high school in 1997, Dowlin headed straight to New York to join the Theater for a New Generation run by Mel Williams, his high school drama teacher.

"Corner Wars," produced at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Company's space on West 47th Street, presents a raw slice of life in North Philadelphia, written in the hip-hop language of the streets. The show has an "originality about it that is worth encouraging," New York Times critic Bruce Weber wrote in January.

The Oppy committee comprises playwrights Lapine, Richard Greenberg, Edward Albee and Wendy Wasserstein; Newsday chief theater critic Linda Winer; Newsday assistant managing editor Phyllis Singer; former Newsday theater critic Alan Wallach, and Sylviane Gold, who writes dance criticism for Newsday. Publisher Raymond A. Jansen will present the award at a luncheon Nov. 13.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/ny-flshort3451175sep12,0,6040993.column

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