Bess Wohl's 'liberation' Wins Pulitzer For Drama. Could A Tony Be Next?

Bess Wohl’s play “Liberation” took location nan 2026 Pulitzer for play connected Monday, successful a triumph that could bode good for Tuesday’s Tony Award nominations.

“Liberation” is simply a representation play, successful which a girl attempts to understand her mother’s past arsenic a personnel of a female liberation group successful 1970s Ohio. The main character, Lizzie, imagines her mother’s acquisition erstwhile she formed a “conscious raising group” pinch her friends. The communicative is based partially connected Wohl’s experiences pinch her ain mother, Lisa Cronin Wohl, who wrote for Ms. magazine.

The play, directed by Whitney White, opened astatine nan James Earl Jones Theatre connected Broadway successful October 2025 and ran until February 2026. The show is scheduled to unfastened astatine nan Geffen Playhouse successful January 2027. Times theatre professional Charles McNulty called “Liberation” “one of nan champion plays of nan year.”

“The individual is political, arsenic nan feminist rallying outcry has it, and Wohl has taken pains ne'er to suffer show of this penetration erstwhile imagining nan complexities of nan lives of others,” McNulty wrote.

This is Wohl’s first Pulitzer win. She besides wrote “American Hero,” “Small Mouth Sounds,” “Continuity, “Make Believe” and “Grand Horizons,” which premiered connected Broadway successful 2019.

There is caller precedent for nan play that wins nan Pulitzer to besides find itself successful nan moving for a Tony. Last year, “Purpose” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins took location nan Pulitzer, earlier receiving a Tony Award for champion play.

“Bowl EP” by Nazareth Hassan and “Meet nan Cartozians” by Talene Monahon were finalists for nan Pultizer.