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The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama

Finalist: Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, by Kristina Wong

A humorous and moving performance piece detailing how the author became the founder of a homemade face mask operation in the early months of the COVID epidemic, reflecting on the significance of women of color performing an historically gendered and racialized form of labor at a time of rising anti-Asian bigotry.

Nominated Work

Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord

By

Kristina Wong

Official trailer. (New York Theatre Workshop)

On Day 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic, NYTW Usual Suspect Kristina Wong began sewing masks out of old bedsheets and bra straps on her Hello Kitty sewing machine. Before long, she was leading the Auntie Sewing Squad, a work-from-home sweatshop of hundreds of volunteers—including children and her own mother—to fix the U.S. public health care system while in quarantine. It was a feminist care utopia forming in the midst of crisis. Or was it a mutual aid doomsday cult?

As the demand for masks abated and we began to return safely to space, Kristina was beginning to put her life together post-pandemic cult leadership. With hilarity and boundless generosity, she invited the audience in on her work building community in isolation, while reflecting on what we’d been through and imagining what we wanted to become. NYTW Usual Suspect Chay Yew (The Architecture of Loss, Oedipus El Rey) directed.

Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord was performed at New York Theatre Workshop (79 East 4th Street, NY, NY 10003) from October 25–November 21, 2021. The production was also available to stream online from December 1–December 14, 2021.

Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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

Biography

Kristina Wong is a performance artist, comedian, writer and elected representative who has been presented internationally across North America, the UK, Hong Kong and Africa. Her work has been awarded with grants from Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, Center for Cultural Innovation, National Performance Network, a COLA Master Artist Fellowship from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as nine Los Angeles Artist-in-Residence awards. Center Theatre Group honored her as the 2019 Sherwood Award. Her rap career in post-conflict Northern Uganda was the subject of The Wong Street Journal which toured the US, Canada and Lagos, Nigeria (presented by the US Consulate). Her long running show Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest looked at the high rates of depression and suicide among Asian American women and is now a concert film. Kristina currently serves as the elected representative of Wilshire Center Koreatown Sub-district 5 Neighborhood Council, the subject of her show Kristina Wong for Public Office. In the pandemic, the national tour of that show pivoted to streaming performances from her home and a professional recording for Center Theater Group’s Digital Stage where she is a member of the Creative Collective. As Overlord of the national mutual aid collective Auntie Sewing Squad, Kristina has deepened her practice as a performance artist neck-deep in doing the work of FEMA.

Winners

Prize Winner in Drama in 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. Drama

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2022:

Sylvia Khoury

A riveting portrait of an Afghan family under extreme wartime duress that explores the agonizing personal choices and human costs of those who aided the effort in Afghanistan at their own peril.

The Jury

Misha Berson(Chair)

Freelance Arts Writer and Former Drama Critic, The Seattle Times

David John Chávez

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

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Playwright and Associate Professor of Practice in Playwriting, University of Texas at Austin

Alisa Solomon

Professor of Journalism and Director in Arts Concentration, MA Program in Journalism, Columbia University

Robert Weinert-Kendt

Editor-in-Chief, American Theatre

Winners in Drama

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.
2018

Martyna Majok

An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.
See All Drama

2022 Prize Winners

Feature Writing

Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic

For an unflinching portrait of a family’s reckoning with loss in the 20 years since 9/11, masterfully braiding the author's personal connection to the story with sensitive reporting that reveals the long reach of grief.
See All 2022 Winners