“Primary Trust,” a heartwarming new play by Eboni Booth about a man who starts over after losing his life-defining job, has been awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it was announced Monday. The play will make its San Diego premiere in September at La Jolla Playhouse.
The Pulitzer committee also on Monday announced the two plays honored as this year’s finalists: Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronch’s “Here There are Blueberries,” which made its world premiere in 2022 at La Jolla Playhouse in a co-production with Tectonic Theatre, and Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s “Public Obscenities.”
“Here There are Blueberries” is one of three La Jolla Playhouse-born shows to open in New York this spring. “Blueberries,” inspired by the real-life photo album of a Nazi concentration camp officer, opens May 13 in an off Broadway production at New York Theatre Workshop.
The Playhouse’s world premiere 2023 musical “The Outsiders” opened April 11 on Broadway and last week picked up 12 Tony Award nominations, including best musical, book and score. And “Lempicka,” which had its pre-Broadway tryout at the Playhouse in 2022, opened April 14. It picked up three Tony nominations, but weak reviews and ticket sales led producers to announce it will close on May 19.
Booth’s play “Primary Trust,” which will play Sept. 24 through Oct. 20 at the Playhouse, is the story of Kenneth, a 36-year-old bookstore worker in a small upstate New York town who spends his evenings sipping mai tais at the local tiki bar with his best friend, Bert. When he’s suddenly laid off, Kenneth faces challenges he has long avoided with transformative and heart-warming results. It will be directed here by Knud Adams, who directed the play’s off Broadway production last year.