NEW YORK CITY: This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which includes a $15,000 award, has been awarded to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for his play Purpose, which had its premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. Finalists for this year’s award include Oh, Mary! by Cole Escola, which premiered off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and The Ally by Itamar Moses, which received its world premiere at The Public in New York City.

The Pulitzer committee described Jacobs-Jenkins’ play as “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.”

Escola’s play was described as “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,” while Moses’s play was called “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.”

This year’s jury for the Drama prize was chaired by playwright David Henry Hwang with Tanya Barfield, co-director of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School; Rebecca Gilman, playwright and Goodman Theatre artistic associate; Helen Shaw, staff writer for The New Yorker; and José Luis Valenzuela, director of Latino Theater Company at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.