Michael Cristofer

Pulitzer Prize winner for his 1977 Broadway play, "The Shadow Box", which was made into a television film, Prima dell'ombra (1980) starring Joanne Woodward and Christopher Plummer.

[on his libretto for the opera 'Champion'] I saw in Emile [Griffith]'s life the story of a man who was fighting to reconcile who he was inside with who he was in the outside world. He was a young man who wanted to make hats and sing and play baseball and instead became a famous and successful prize fighter. He was confused about his sexual identity and that confusion led to violence. That violence led to the death of another man.