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That Championship Season was only the second full-length play written by playwright Jason Miller and was by far his most successful. Miller was primarily an actor (The Exorcist), who wrote plays on the side. In 1973, by winning a Pulitzer Prize for the play, Miller was lifted out of obscurity. Jason Miller’s That Championship Season was regarded as one of the more important plays of its time. Jason Miller, (April 22, 1939 – May 13, 2001) born John Anthony Miller in Queens, New York, USA to a Catholic family, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright and actor. ...
The Exorcist is an Academy Award-winning 1973 film, based on the novel by William Peter Blatty first published in 1971. ...
1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ...
The gold medal awarded for Public Service in Journalism The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest national honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical compositions. ...
Setting
The Coach's home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the year 1972.
Characters The Coach
George Sitkowski
Phil Romano
James Daley
Tom Daley
Plot On the twentieth anniversary of their victory in the Pennsylvania state championship game, four members of the starting lineup of a Catholic high school basketball team have gathered at their old coach's home, to celebrate. The coach is terminally ill, and this reunion may be their last chance to reminisce with him.
George Sitkowski is the mayor of the town, but has proven inept and unpopular, and is likely to lose his bid for re-election. That his challenger is Jewish is particularly galling to him.
Phil Romano has become a millionaire in the strip-mining business, using his close ties to Mayor George Sitkowski to obtain mining permis. He helps George financially, but may be carrying on an affair with George's wife.
James Daley is a local junior high school principal.
James' brother Tom is an unsuccessful writer, a bitter, cynical alcoholic and ne'er-do-well.
The fifth member of the starting lineup, Martin, has refused to attend the reunion. He bears a grudge against the coach, for reasons that do not become clear until late in the play.
None of the men's lives has turned out as they'd hoped, and at some level, all of them still look to their old coach for guidance. The Coach has always been the embodiment of old-school Catholicism (Senator Joseph McCarthy and Father Charles Coughlin are heroes of his), the one person in their lives who was sure of everything, and his absolute certainty and confidence gave them a sense of security. While the Coach thought he was teaching his players how to be men, it appears that these middle-aged men are still emotional adolescents who need the Coach to tell them how to live their lives. But the Coach's pep talks, which had always inspired them, are beginning to sound hollow. Only now, these many years later, do the men begin to suspect that their coach was a bigot, a bully, and a bit of a fraud. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. ...
Father Coughlin Father Charles Edward Coughlin (October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979) was a Canadian-born Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigans National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. ...
Stage - That Championship Season made its debut off-Broadway at the Estelle Newman/Public Theatre on May 2, 1972, where it ran for 144 performances.
- The production was then moved to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, where it ran for an additional 844 performances.
The play ran for a total of 988 performances before it closed on April 21, 1974.
The original cast:
Tom Daley..............Walter McGinn
George Sikowski.....Charles Durning Charles Durning Charles Durning (born February 28, 1923 in Highland Falls, New York) is an American actor of stage and screen, born to an impoverished Irish American Catholic family, which he left as soon as possible to ease the financial pressure on his mother. ...
James Daley...........Michael McGuire
Phil Romano...........Paul Sorvino Paul Anthony Sorvino (born April 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City) is an Italian-American character actor whose career has largely been the portrayal of authority figures, both as legal enforcer and criminal, in television, stage, and film. ...
Coach:...................Richard Dysart Richard Dysart (b. ...
Awards That Championship Season won numerous awards, including:
1972
- New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play
- Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright
- Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Playwriting Award
1973 Created in 1955, the Drama Desk Award was created to recognize Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway shows in addition to Broadway shows. ...
What is popularly called the Tony Award (formally, the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre) is an annual award celebrating achievements in live American theater, including musical theater, primarily honoring productions on Broadway in New York. ...
The gold medal awarded for Public Service in Journalism The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest national honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical compositions. ...
Reception From its earliest productions, That Championship Season was widely praised by critics, though a few dissenters had problems with certain aspects of the play. Those who like the play compliment its humor, dialogue, and characters. Reviewing the Broadway production, Clive Barnes of the New York Times writes, "Mr. Miller has a perfect ear and instinct for the rough and tumble profanity of locker-room humor. The coarsely elegant gibes go along with Mr. Miller’s indictment of a society, which opens with an ironic playing of the National Anthem and then lacerates the sickness of small-town America full of bigotry, double-dealing, racism and hate."
Film and television For years Miller worked on bringing his play to film. - In 1982 he succeeded in both screenwriting and directing That Championship Season using top Hollywood talent of the time and filming on-location in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the story takes place and Miller was raised and residing.
That Championsip Season (1982) is Jason Millers screen version of his 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play of the same name. ...
The City of Scranton is the county seat of Lackawanna CountyGR6 in Northeastern Pennsylvania, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 76,415 (2003 estimate: 74,320). ...
1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...
Paul Anthony Sorvino (born April 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City) is an Italian-American character actor whose career has largely been the portrayal of authority figures, both as legal enforcer and criminal, in television, stage, and film. ...
That Championship Season is a 1999 television film about a four members of a championship high school basketball team, along with their coach, that reunite 20 years later. ...
External links - WPKN Today / That Championship Season
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