At a time when theater already seems culturally marginal, the Pulitzer board’s announcement yesterday that it awarded no prize this year in drama was dispiriting, but not particularly surprising.

It wasn’t unprecedented: The Pulitzer board has declined to give an award in a category 58 times since 1917,and 15 times in drama – the most of any category. And an administrative change affected the eligibility: The drama award was in the process of switching to a calendar-year schedule from a March-to-March schedule.

It was also just slim pickings this year, the chair of the selection committee and Newsday’s chief drama critic, Linda Winer, said. “There wasn’t anything that stood up and screamed, ‘Look at me, I’m a Pulitzer Prize-winning play!’ … That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some really distinguished work done,” she said. “It just means that there wasn’t any obvious Pulitzer play.”

The process of choosing a prize-winning play starts with a committee of jurors that selects three nominees. This year, they were “Miss Witherspoon,” by Christopher Durang, “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow,” by Rolin Jones, and “Red Light Winter,”by Adam Rapp.

The committee then sends the nominees – in alphabetical order, so as not to suggest a favorite – to the Pulitzer board, which is made up mostly of journalists. The Pulitzer board votes, and if none of the nominees wins a majority,no prize is awarded.The board can venture outside the nominees, but that’s rare.

“Usually, the board is considering a lot of material, so it deals with what the juries put forward and then it makes a decision,” the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, Sig Gissler, said. “We have over 1,000 books that come in. We have over 1,300 newspaper entries.The board ends up reading 15 books and considering three drama and three music awards and umpteen entries in 14 journalism categories.”

It’s not hard to imagine none of this year’s nominees receiving a majority of votes. The Pulitzer tends to go to a play that makes a big, topical statement about current events, history, race, or gender. Last year’s “Doubt” was perfectly timed to stir discussion about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Other recent winners were “I Am My Own Wife,” about an East German transvestite who cooperated with the secret police, and Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics,” about the tradition of lectors in Cuban cigar factories. Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog,” about two black brothers named Lincoln and Booth, also won.

This year’s nominees didn’t make any clear political statements. “Jenny Chow” and “Miss Witherspoon” were comic and decidedly quirky.”Red Light Winter” certainly took itself seriously – one of the characters is a prostitute who is HIV-positive – but its themes were psychological rather than political, and they were explored with only moderate success.

It’s hard to say the jurors missed any other obvious picks. The Pulitzer Prize is national, but the theater scene in New York is a fair representation of the national situation: As critics have com plained repeatedly, Broadway theaters are filled with revivals and big musicals. This year,several productions are based on the lives of deceased pop stars. The major off-Broadway companies make safe choices, too, often sticking with proven names, even when new works – like Richard Greenberg’s “Naked Girl on the Appian Way,” which the Roundabout Theater Company produced on Broadway this year – are mediocre.

It’s not that there aren’t original, exciting plays being written, but they aren’t being produced. They aren’t being produced because there isn’t enough of an audience for the theater. And with few great plays being produced, the dwindling audience that does exist gets more and more discouraged. It’s a vicious circle.

“[The Pulitzers and the Tonys] meant something at some point,” Robert LuPone, the artistic director of the MCC Theater and interim dean of the New School for Drama, said. “But it’s questionable what they mean now, given the lack of culture in society, or the lack of empathy towards the theater and culture … or, well, the lack of plays.”

The 2006 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded as follows.

JOURNALISM

Public Service – Two Prizes: the Sun Herald of South Mississippi and the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

Breaking News Reporting – Staff of the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

Investigative Reporting – Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi, and R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post.

Explanatory Reporting- David Finkel of the Washington Post.

Beat Reporting – Dana Priest of the Washington Post.

National Reporting – Two Prizes: James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times and the staffs of the San Diego Union-Tribune and Copley News Service.

International Reporting – Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley of the New York Times.

Feature Writing – Jim Sheeler of the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colo. Commentary – Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times.

Criticism – Robin Givhan of the Washington Post.

Editorial Writing – Rick Attig and Doug Bates of the (Portland) Oregonian.

Editorial Cartooning – Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Breaking News Photography – Staff of the Dallas Morning News.

Feature Photography – Todd Heisler of the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colo.

ARTS

Fiction – “March,” by Geraldine Brooks (Viking).

Drama – No Award

Nominated finalists: “Miss Witherspoon,” by Christopher Durang. “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow,” by Rolin Jones. “Red Light Winter,” by Adam Rapp.

History – “Polio: An American Sto ry,” by David Oshinsky (Oxford University Press).

Biography – “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (Alfred A. Knopf).

Poetry – “Late Wife,” by Claudia Emerson (Louisiana State University Press).

General Nonfiction – “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya,” by Caroline Elkins (Henry Holt).

Music – Piano Concerto: “Chiavi in Mano,” by Yehudi Wyner (Associated Music Publishers).

SPECIAL CITATIONS

Edmund Morgan, honored for what Pulitzer officials described as “his creative and deeply influential body of work as an American historian that spans the last half century.”

Thelonious Monk, honored posthumously for “a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz.”