Usher is a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical. Michael R. Jackson’s blistering, momentous new musical follows a young artist at war with a host of demons — not least of which, the punishing thoughts in his own head — in an attempt to capture and understand his own strange loop.
For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).
A Strange Loop, by 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.
Michael R. Jackson accepts the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. (Jose Lopez/The Pulitzer Prizes)
Winning Work
A Strange Loop
Biography
Michael R. Jackson holds a BFA and MFA in playwriting and musical theatre writing from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. As a songwriter, he has seen his work performed everywhere from Joe’s Pub to NAMT. He wrote lyrics and co-wrote book for the musical adaptation of the 2007 horror film Teeth with composer and co-bookwriter Anna K. Jacobs. He wrote book, music, and lyrics for the musicals White Girl In Danger and A Strange Loop (2019 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in co-production with Page 73 Productions). Awards and associations include: a New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting and a Dramatist Guild Fellowship. He has commissions from Grove Entertainment & Barbara Whitman Productions and LCT3.
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2020:
David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori
A multi-layered and mischievous musical that deconstructs a beloved, original American art form to examine the promise and the limits of representation in both the theatrical and political senses of the word.
Will Arbery
A scrupulously hewn drama centering on four alumni of a conservative Catholic college who confront themselves and each other, clashing over theology, politics and personal responsibility.
The Jury
The Jury
Wendy Goldberg(Chair)
Artistic Director
Naveen Kumar
Writer/Editor, New York City
Dominic Papatola
Theater Critic, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Janice Simpson
Director, Arts and Culture Reporting, CUNY Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism
Alisa Solomon
Professor of Journalism and Director in Arts Concentration, MA Program in Journalism, Columbia University
Winners in Drama
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.
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.
Lynn Nottage
For a nuanced yet powerful drama that reminds audiences of the stacked deck still facing workers searching for the American dream.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
A landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible.
2020 Prize Winners
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times
For a sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times
For work demonstrating extraordinary community service by a critic, applying his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.
Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald-Press
For editorials that exposed how pre-trial inmates died horrific deaths in a small Texas county jail—reflecting a rising trend across the state—and courageously took on the local sheriff and judicial establishment, which tried to cover up these needless tragedies.
Staff of The Washington Post
For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.