Bess Wohl’s play “Liberation” took home the 2026 Pulitzer for drama on Monday, in a win that could bode well for Tuesday’s Tony Award nominations.
“Liberation” is a memory play, in which a daughter attempts to understand her mother’s past as a member of a female liberation group in 1970s Ohio. The main character, Lizzie, imagines her mother’s experience when she formed a “conscious raising group” with her friends. The story is based partially on Wohl’s experiences with her own mother, Lisa Cronin Wohl, who wrote for Ms. magazine.
The play, directed by Whitney White, opened at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway in October 2025 and ran until February 2026. The show is scheduled to open at the Geffen Playhouse in January 2027. Times theater critic Charles McNulty called “Liberation” “one of the best plays of the year.”
“The personal is political, as the feminist rallying cry has it, and Wohl has taken pains never to lose sight of this insight when imagining the complexities of the lives of others,” McNulty wrote.
This is Wohl’s first Pulitzer win. She also wrote “American Hero,” “Small Mouth Sounds,” “Continuity, “Make Believe” and “Grand Horizons,” which premiered on Broadway in 2019.
There is recent precedent for the play that wins the Pulitzer to also find itself in the running for a Tony. Last year, “Purpose” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins took home the Pulitzer, before receiving a Tony Award for best play.
“Bowl EP” by Nazareth Hassan and “Meet the Cartozians” by Talene Monahon were finalists for the Pultizer.
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