Michael R. Jackson’s “A Strange Loop” won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The musical, which features a book and score by Michael R. Jackson
and direction by Stephen Brackett, premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in the summer of 2019. It centers on a young theater usher working to write his own musical while grappling with questions of sexuality, race and identity.
The other finalists in the drama category were “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” by Will Arbery, which also premiered at Playwrights Horizons, and “Soft Power” by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori, which played the Public Theater in fall 2019 after runs at the Ahmanson Theatre and Curran Theatre.
As it aims for Broadway, “A Strange Loop” has an upcoming run scheduled in September at Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama jury was comprised of journalists Dominic Papatola, Alisa Soloman, Naveen Kumar and Janice Simpson, with Wendy C. Goldberg, artistic director of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, as the chair.
Recent winners in the drama category include “Fairview” by Jackie Sibblies Drury, “Cost of Living” by Martyna Majok and “Sweat” by Lynn Nottage.
