Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Purpose Wins the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

The 2025 Pulitzer Prizes were revealed May 5, with the Drama category going to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for his play Purpose. The work is currently running on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre.

Finalists for the honor included Cole Escola's Oh, Mary! and Itamar Moses' The Ally.

Purpose follows an Illinois family of civil rights leaders, pastors, and congressmen—pillars of Black American politics—with secrets lying just beneath the surface. When the youngest son Nazareth returns home with an uninvited friend, the family is ultimately forced to reckon with itself, their faith, and the legacies of Black radicalism.

Written by and starring Cole Escola, Oh, Mary! is currently running on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre. The play centers on famous First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In Escola's demented take (or as press notes put it, "through the lens of an idiot"), Mary Todd becomes a madcap, cabaret-obsessed alcoholic

Itamar Moses' The Ally played Off-Broadway Public Theater through multiple extensions. The play centers on Asaf, a college professor who's thrown into conflict when he's asked to sign a social justice manifesto. What seems at first like a simple choice instead embroils him in an increasingly complex web of conflicting agendas that challenge his allegiances as a progressive, a husband, an artist, an academic, an American, an atheist, and a Jew. With tensions at an all-time high, Asaf is forced to confront the age-old question: “If I am only for myself, what am I?��

Both Purpose and Oh, Mary! are nominated for Best Play at the 2025 Tony Awards.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama most frequently is awarded to an American play, though 2019 winner A Strange Loop is one of 10 musicals to take the honor since it was first awarded in 1917. Last year's winner was Primary Trust by Eboni Booth. Previous winners include Sanaz Toossi's English, James Ijames' Fat Ham, Katori Hall's The Hot Wing King, Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview, Martyna Majok's Cost of Living (also a 2023 Tony Award nominee for Best Play), and Lynn Nottage's Sweat.

The Drama prize is decided by a jury comprising three critics, an academic, and a playwright who attend plays in New York and at regional theatres across the country. The production is allowed to factor into the judges' decision-making, though the award is bestowed on the work's playwright alone.