Finalist: The Ally, by Itamar Moses

A timely drama about activism, conflicting expectations, and moral responsibility on a college campus, probing American identity and the contradictions within progressive politics, using richly drawn characters with a deep emotional resonance.

Nominated Work

The Ally

Itamar Moses

Production trailer. (Public Theater)

THE ALLY
By Itamar Moses
Directed by Lila Neugebauer

Tony Award-winning playwright Itamar Moses (The Band’s Visit) returns to The Public with the world premiere of THE ALLY, a fierce drama that gives voice to some of the most contentious and important questions of our time.

When college professor Asaf (Josh Radnor) is asked by a student 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?”

Directed by Drama Desk Award winner Lila Neugebauer (The Wolves), THE ALLY is a passionate, provocative, and unflinching new play about the vanishing line between the personal and the political.

-- from the 2024 Public Theater production page

Biography

Itamar Moses is the Tony Award-winning author of the plays OUTRAGE, BACH AT LEIPZIG, THE FOUR OF US, CELEBRITY ROW, BACK BACK BACK, COMPLETENESS, THE WHISTLEBLOWER, and THE ALLY, the evening of short plays LOVE/STORIES (OR BUT YOU WILL GET USED TO IT), and the musicals NOBODY LOVES YOU (with Gaby Alter), FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE (with Michael Friedman), THE BAND'S VISIT (with David Yazbek), DEAD OUTLAW (with Yazbek and Erik Della Penna), and AN AMERICAN TAIL (with Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler). His work has appeared on and Off-Broadway, at regional theatres across the country and internationally. Other awards for his work include Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Obie, and Drama Desk awards in New York, as well as awards from the Portland, San Diego, Dallas, and Bay Area Theatre Critics Circles. Television work includes MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE, BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and THE AFFAIR. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and has taught playwriting at Yale and NYU and is a proud member of the Dramatists' Guild and the Writer's Guild of America. Born in Berkeley, CA, he now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Winners

Prize Winner in Drama in 2025:

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

A play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African-American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage. Drama

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2025:

Cole Escola

A zany portrait of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln’s family life whose outrageous humor also serves as an empathetic celebration of anyone who’s been marginalized or misunderstood.

The Jury

David Henry Hwang(Chair)

Playwright; Professor of Theatre Arts in the Faculty of the Arts, Columbia University

Tanya Barfield

Co-Director, The Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program, The Juilliard School

Rebecca Gilman

Playwright and Artistic Associate, Goodman Theatre

Helen Shaw

Staff Writer, The New Yorker

José Luis Valenzuela

Director, Latino Theater Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center

Winners in Drama

2024

Eboni Booth

A simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.

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.

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.

See All Drama

2025 Prize Winners

National Reporting

Staff of The Wall Street Journal

For chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Local Reporting

Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times

For a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms.

Commentary

Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker

For essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel.

Criticism

Alexandra Lange, contributing writer, Bloomberg CityLab

For graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families, deftly using interviews, observations and analysis to consider the architectural components that allow children and communities to thrive.

See All 2025 Winners