An outstanding artist as a child, playwright Donald Margulies won a partial scholarship to the prestigious Pratt Institute in his native Brooklyn and then transferred to SUNY Purchase. There, under the wing of critic and professor Julius Novick, he decided he would be a playwright, and though the road was long and hard (he spent several years toiling as a graphics designer), he finally made an impression when "Sight Unseen" (1991), his meditation on art, fame, money and lost love, earned an OBIE and became a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. It marked his first association with South Coast