On June 7, at the 79th annual Tony Awards, playwright Bess Wohl became the fourth woman in Tonys history to win the award for Best Play. Wohl triumphed for her play “Liberation,” which chronicles the weekly meetings of a women’s consciousness-raising group in 1970s Ohio. (Wohl spoke to Broadway News on the red carpet about setting the play in Ohio.)
Wohl is the fourth woman playwright to win in this category, after Frances Goodrich who co-wrote “The Diary of Anne Frank” with Albert Hackett (1956), Wendy Wasserstein for “The Heidi Chronicles” (1989) and Yasmina Reza for “Art” (1998) and “God of Carnage” (2009). Wohl specifically called out Wasserstein in her acceptance speech as the last American woman playwright to have won a Tony for Best Play — until tonight.
Prior to “Liberation,” Wohl made her Broadway debut in 2020 with her play “Grand Horizons,” for which she earned a Tony nomination. Some of her additional works include “Barcelona,” “Small Mouth Sounds,” “Camp Siegfried,” “Make Believe” and “Continuity.”
“Liberation” won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and has already announced a London production. The licensing rights have been acquired by Concord Theatricals. The play debuted Off-Broadway with Roundabout Theatre Company before transferring to Broadway, where it bowed at the James Ear Jones Theatre. “Liberation” officially opened on Oct. 28, 2025, and closed on Feb. 1, 2026.
The Tony Award for Best Play also goes to the “Liberation” producers, led by Eva Price, Daryl Roth and Rachel Sussman.
Ruthie Fierberg
