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The 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama

Finalist: On Sugarland, by Aleshea Harris

An ambitious drama, inspired by Sophocles, of a community shaped by the trauma of a nameless war they have been dealing with for generations, and the ancestors they mourn, a solemn but also joyful work.

Nominated Work

By

Official teaser trailer. (New York Theatre Workshop)

By Aleshea Harris
Directed by Whitney White
Choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly

February 5, 2022—March 20, 2022

ON SUGARLAND runs approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes with one 15-minute intermission.

Sugarland is on precarious soil—three mobile homes line a southern cul-de-sac replete with years and years of decorative folk-art treasures and keepsakes. Young Sadie calls on generations of matriarchal ancestors to find the truth about her mother while the denizens of Sugarland rise each day to holler for the dead—conscripted soldiers lost to a greedy war—in a ritual reclamation of timeless grief.

This sweeping new work from Obie Award-winning playwright Aleshea Harris (Is God Is, What to Send Up When It Goes Down) is at once a spectacular pageant and spirited meditation on remarkable people transcending difficult circumstances. On Sugarland brings joyous life to communal healing with a glorious ensemble of 14 performers in a production directed by Obie Award winner, NYTW Usual Suspect & former 2050 Fellow Whitney White (What to Send Up When It Goes Down) and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly (Hurricane Diane, The House That Will Not Stand)

On Sugarland is made possible by the generosity of The Roy Cockrum Foundation and the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation.

Scenic Design Adam Rigg
Costume Design Qween Jean
Lighting Design Amith Chandrashaker
Sound Design & Co-Original Compositions Mikaal Sulaiman
Original Music Starr Busby
Hair & Wig Design Earon Nealey
Fight Direction UnkleDave’s Fight-House
Dramaturgy Lauren Whitehead
Casting Taylor Williams
Stage Manager Alfredo Macias

-- from the New York Theatre Workshop's production page

Biography

Aleshea Harris’s play Is God Is (directed by Taibi Magar at Soho Rep and Ola Ince at the Royal Court) won the 2016 Relentless Award, an Obie Award for playwriting in 2017, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award in 2019 and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. What to Send Up When It Goes Down, a play-pageant-ritual response to anti-Blackness, had its critically acclaimed NYC premiere in 2018 (directed by Whitney White and produced by The Movement Theatre Company), was featured in the April 2019 issue of American Theatre Magazine, and received a rare special commendation from the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The play was subsequently remounted at Woolly Mammoth, A.R.T., BAM and Playwrights Horizons. Her newest play, On Sugarland (directed by Whitney White) premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in the spring of 2022.

Awards: Windham-Campbell Literary Prize, Mimi Steinberg Playwriting Award, Hermitage Greenfield Prize, Horton Foote Playwriting Award, Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Harris is a two-time MacDowell Fellow and has enjoyed residencies at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Hedgebrook and Djerassi.

Winners

Prize Winner in Drama in 2023:

Sanaz Toossi

A quietly powerful play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in a storefront school near Tehran, where family separations and travel restrictions drive them to learn a new language that may alter their identities and also represent a new life. Drama

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2023:

Lloyd Suh

An account of emigrants who traveled from China to San Francisco and suffered in the shadows of a strange new world, a historical portrait of the ruthless dynamic of immigration that is also timely.

The Jury

David John Chávez(Chair)

Chair, American Theatre Critics Association; Correspondent, San Jose Mercury News

Vinson Cunningham

Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Soraya Nadia McDonald

Senior Culture Critic, Andscape

Heidi Schreck

Playwright, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Kristina Wong

Performance Artist/Playwright, Los Angeles, Calif.

Winners in Drama

2022

James Ijames

A funny, poignant play that deftly transposes "Hamlet" to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.
2021

Katori Hall

A funny, deeply felt consideration of Black masculinity and how it is perceived, filtered through the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family as they prepare for a culinary competition.
2020

Michael R. Jackson

A metafictional musical that tracks the creative process of an artist transforming issues of identity, race, and sexuality that once pushed him to the margins of the cultural mainstream into a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities.
2019

Jackie Sibblies Drury

A hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual, layered structure, ultimately bringing audiences into the actors’ community to face deep-seated prejudices.
See All Drama

2023 Prize Winners

Commentary

Kyle Whitmire of AL.com, Birmingham

For measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion, told through tours of its first capital, its mansions and monuments–and through the history that has been omitted.
Investigative Reporting

Staff of The Wall Street Journal

For sharp accountability reporting on financial conflicts of interest among officials at 50 federal agencies, revealing those who bought and sold stocks they regulated and other ethical violations by individuals charged with safeguarding the public’s interest.
See All 2023 Winners