Bess Wohl becomes fourth woman in history to win the Tony Award for Best Play

Her play Liberation already won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and has multiple future productions planned, even though its Broadway run has concluded.

The last time a woman won the Tony Award for Best Play was in 2009, when Yasmina Reza triumphed for God of Carnage. Seventeen years later, Bess Wohl has cemented herself in history alongside Reza, Frances Goodrich, and Wendy Wasserstein by becoming only the fourth-ever woman to win the top honor for Liberation.

"It feels so incredibly gratifying to get to stand here with these incredible women, our all-female producing team, and our whole cohort of beautiful people who made the show together, and to celebrate," said Wohl at a press conference after her win. "It feels really special to have had the opportunity to say what I said in my [acceptance] speech, and honor Wendy Wasserstein and so many other great women playwrights throughout history."

As Wohl told New York Theatre Guide during the show's now-closed run last fall, she was repeatedly told the show would never get produced for featuring an all-female cast and gasp-worthy elements like nudity, and a group of ordinary women talking to each other in the hope of making change. But Liberation was an immediate hit upon its 2025 Off-Broadway premiere, which led to a rapid Broadway transfer, a Pulitzer Prize, and now, a historic Tony.

The central characters are a group of suburban women starting a feminist group in the 1970s, and Wohl wants the play's spirit of changemaking and conversation to extend to its audiences. "My hope with the play was always that it would provide a spark of courage to everyone who saw it," she said. "I wanted it to make people braver, I wanted it to make people have the conversations that they need to have to to show up more fully in their own lives."

Plenty more people will do that now that Liberation has future productions planned across the U.S. and in London. And that's only the beginning, according to producer Eva Price.

"A once in a generation play is going to be done over and over. It'll be produced not just by us, but by every American and international theatre that can get their hands on this play," she said. "It is a play that will continue in the canon.

"It is that good, and the world needs to see Liberation for generations to come."

Photo credit: Liberation on Broadway. (Photo by Little Fang)