The Shadow Box is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play by Michael Cristofer that explores the lives of three terminally ill patients in separate cottages on a hospital’s grounds, focusing on their relationships with family and friends as they confront mortality. The play uses an interviewer as a device for characters to speak frankly about their situations, revealing deep personal impacts and conflicts, such as a son’s unawareness of his father’s illness and a daughter’s fabricated letters to her mother. It premiered on Broadway in 1977 and is known for its courageous, unsentimental, and sometimes comic look at life and death.