Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust Wins 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

The 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama has been awarded to Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust. Making the announcement, Pulitzer administrator Marjorie Miller described the play as “a simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.”

Primary Trust premiered off-Broadway at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre last year, starring Tony nominee William Jackson Harper (Uncle Vanya), Jay O. Sanders, April Matthis (Mary Jane) and Eric Berryman. Booth is a graduate of Juilliard's playwriting program and the University of Vermont.

For the eighth consecutive year, the Pulitzer winner and finalists selected did not include any Broadway productions. The two other finalists for the prize were the documentary drama Here There Are Blueberries, conceived and directed by Tony and Emmy nominee Moisés Kaufman and co-written by Emmy nominee Amanda Gronich, and Public Obscenities, written and directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury.

Here There Are Blueberries, inspired by the real-life story of a photo album delivered to a Holocaust museum, premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2022 and is currently in performances at New York Theatre Workshop. Public Obscenities, a drama about identity, home, queerness and language, had its premiere at Soho Rep in 2023 and was staged at Theatre for a New Audience earlier in 2024.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is awarded “for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life.” The Pulitzer Prize Board recently expanded eligibility requirements to include non-U.S. citizens. Full-length dramas that opened in the United States between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023 were eligible for entry.

The year-long judging process begins with the appointment of jurors who attend productions in New York and at regional theaters. This year's jury comprised writer Lisa Fung, theater critic Lily Janiak, Pulitzer-winning playwright Tracy Letts and playwright-director Chay Yew. Janice Simpson, the former director of the arts journalism program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, served as chair.

Recent winners of the prize include English by Sanaz Toossi (2023), Fat Ham by James Ijames (2022) and The Hot Wing King by Katori Hall (2021).

New Yorker staff writer Vinson Cunnigham was also named a Pulitzer finalist for "theater reviews that reflect a formidable knowledge of the stage and the mechanics of performance along with canny observations on the human condition."