Although some Pulitzer representatives denied that the decision not to award the prize in drama represented either a snub to finalists or a comment on the sorry state of new American theater, some in the theater community felt different.

Adam Rapp, who was among the three finalists for his play "Red Light in Winter," said last week that the lack of a drama award was like "a year without a Santa Claus" for playwrights.

Rapp would have been happy if either of the other finalists, Christopher Durang for his play "Miss Witherspoon," or Rolin Jones for "The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow," had won. But Rapp added: "Not to name a winner when there are three plays worthy of being finalists is a little obnoxious. I feel like our vocation is a dying species in America. We need everyone supporting us as much as possible. Telling stories in the theater is an important thing. Playwrights are moving to the West Coast to do TV and film just to stay solvent."

Craig Lucas, whose book for the Broadway musical "The Light in the Piazza" was believed to be in contention, said the Pulitzer committee "wouldn't know the world if it ran over them with a truck." However, he did say that if he had won, he would have been "thrilled for my bank account."

John Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild of America, said winning can give a definite boost to a playwright's career and called the lack of an award "a negative statement" for theater.

Pulitzer prize administrator Sig Gissler disagreed. "I'm no expert on the theater business. All I can say with some confidence is this is not a definitive comment on the state of drama in America," he said, citing the fact that the board has named no winner in drama 15 times in the past.

Linda Winer, Newsday's chief theater critic, led a panel of five jurors who selected the finalists and said that a longer theater calendar still would not have revealed a play that "was jumping up and down and saying, 'I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning play.' "

"'The Rabbit Hole,' " she said, "was a play I didn't like anyway. I'm on the record with the fact that it was a play that was beautifully performed, but it was a movie of the week."

Richard Nelson, a playwright and chair of the playwriting department at the Yale School of Drama, called the decision "unfortunate" and "disappointing." However, he also believes there can be a beneficial effect for the theater community at large.

"It sort of gets people thinking that maybe we're not quite giving the focus to new writing that we should in our theaters," he said. "Sometimes I think it galvanizes things in a healthy way."