Liberation received the 2026 Tony Award for finest play, making playwright Bess Wohl solely the second American girl to win within the class and the primary in near 40 years.
The play, a couple of feminist group assembly in Ohio within the Nineteen Seventies, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama final month. The play follows a narrator describing her mom’s creation of the group and inserting herself into the imagined group setting, amid infighting, pushes for progress and a radical reimagining of womanhood, in addition to a reckoning of the place that stands now. Wohl has said the plot was partly impressed by her mom, Lisa Cronin Wohl, who labored for Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Journal.
“I really need first to thank my mom, who taught me to use my imagination. I need to thank my daughters, who love to remind me that I couldn’t have done it without them and their right,” Wohl mentioned onstage.
With the win, Wohl can also be the primary girl to win a Tony Award for finest play since 2009, when Yasmina Reza of France took residence the award for God of Carnage. The final time an American girl received the award was in 1989, when Wendy Wasserstein took residence the award for The Heidi Chronicles.
“Tonight, I want to honor her, I want to honor women everywhere who have the courage to use their voice, and all the girls out there speaking your truth and make a world be wise enough to listen,” Wohl mentioned.
Liberation, directed by Whitney White, ran on Broadway from October by February and was well-reviewed, however didn’t pull in large viewers numbers. It has since received the Pulitzer and introduced a 2027 London run.
In whole, Liberation was nominated for five Tony Awards, together with finest course of a play, performing nominees for Betsy Aidem and Susannah Flood, who performs the narrator, and finest costume design by Qween Jean (who didn’t win for Liberation, however received for Cats: The Jellicle Ball).
The play beat out the opposite contenders within the class, Big, a play about Roald Dahl and antisemitism, which received the 2025 Olivier for finest play throughout its London run and was seen because the stiffest competitors, and Little Bear Ridge Highway, about an estranged aunt and her nephew reconnecting, produced by Scott Rudin and Barry Diller. John Lithgow stars as Dahl. Laurie Metcalf and Micah Inventory starred in Little Bear Ridge Highway, which ran on Broadway final fall.
