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![\"liberation](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/751-Kristolyn-Lloyd-Irene-Sofia-Lucio-Betsy-Aidem-and-Audrey-Corsa-in-the-Broadway-production-of-Lib.jpeg\")
The cast of \u2018Liberation\u2019 during the play\u2019s Broadway run earlier this year. File photo courtesy of Little Fang PR\n<\/p>\nOnly four women have ever won the Tony Award for Best Play, and two of them are native Brooklynites.\n<\/p>\n
Brooklyn Heights-based playwright Bess Wohl made history Sunday night when she clinched the prize for \u201cLiberation,\u201d which follows a group of women in a feminist consciousness-raising group in 1970s Ohio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Standing on stage with the show\u2019s nearly all-female creative team \u2014 including director Whitney White and producers Daryl Roth, Eva Price and Rachel Sussman, Wohl said the award was \u201cthe honor of a lifetime.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThank you for believing that an ensemble play about women\u2019s lives belonged on Broadway,\u201d she said.\u00a0
\nThe cast of \u2018Liberation\u2019 during the play\u2019s Broadway run earlier this year. File photo courtesy of Little Fang PR\n<\/p>\n
\u201cLiberation\u201d takes place almost entirely in the basement of a recreation center, the meeting place of the second-wave feminist group founded by protagonist Lizzie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One member is forced to watch<\/a> as her less-competent male colleagues get promotions while she stays stagnant; another despairs over an unhappy marriage she\u2019s unable to leave her unhappy marriage because she doesn\u2019t have her own bank account. In the present day, Lizzie\u2019s daughter tries to reconcile<\/a> her mother\u2019s more radical past with her traditional present.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wohl, who grew up in Cobble Hill, worked on the show for over a decade, interviewing<\/a> second-wave feminists and her own mother to weave the narrative. As time wore on, she was told the show would never make it to the Great White Way, according to New York Theatre Guide<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But \u201cLiberation\u201d was a smash success when it opened off-Broadway in 2025, and it quickly transferred to Broadway for a limited run that ended in February.\u00a0<\/p>\n In her speech, Wohl thanked her mother, \u201cwho taught me how to use my imagination,\u201d and her daughters \u201cwho love to remind me I couldn\u2019t have done it without them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The last time a woman won the Tony for Best Play was in 2009, when French writer Yasmina Resa took the prize for \u201cGod of Carnage.\u201d But it\u2019s been much longer since an American woman was recognized, Wohl said in her speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been almost 40 years since an American woman playwright won this award,\u201d Wohl said in her acceptance speech. \u201cThat was Wendy Wassterstein for her brilliant play \u2018Heidi Chronicles.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Wasserstein, a prolific and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer was also a Brooklyn native, born in the borough in 1950 and raised in Midwood<\/a> until the 1960s, when her family moved to Manhattan.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTonight I want to honor her,\u201d Wohl said in her speech. \u201cI want to honor women everywhere who have the courage to use their voice. And to all the girls out there, may you speak your truth and may the world be wide enough to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n The night was a smashing success for Brooklyn<\/a>. Local advocate and costume designer Qween Jean became the first openly-transgender person to win a Tony Award<\/a>, earning the trophy for Best Costume Design of a Musical for \u201cCats: The Jellicle Ball.\u201d<\/p>\n Jean was also nominated for Best Costume Design of a Play for \u201cLiberation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only four women have ever won the Tony Award for Best Play, and two of them are native…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[45548,2571,29126,100967,100968,207,98,100,6748,99,12750,100969,100970,9,24,12,370,63,905,8177,100971,100972,16528],"class_list":["post-259480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-artist","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-award","tag-bess-wohl","tag-best-play","tag-broadway","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-heights","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-cobble-hill","tag-liberation","tag-liberation-broadway","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-newsletter","tag-nyc","tag-theater","tag-theatre","tag-tony-award","tag-wendy-wasserstein","tag-winner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"bess](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-06-08T070511Z_1150520264_HP1EM680655AW_RTRMADP_3_AWARDS-TONY.jpg\")
Wohl is only the fourth woman to win the Tony Award for Best Play. Photo via REUTERS\/Angelina Katsanis\n<\/p>\n