We at Stage Directions send our sincere congratulations to Playwright, Katori Hall for her being awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Hot Wing King. The play is 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. From the Pulitzer Prize announcement – For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000). Here’s a trailer of The Hot Wing King from NY’s Signature Theatre:
“Ready, set, fry! It’s time for the annual “Hot Wang Festival” in Memphis, Tennessee, and Cordell Crutchfield knows he has the wings that’ll make him king. Supported by his beau Dwayne and their culinary clique, The New Wing Order, Cordell is marinating and firing up his frying pan in a bid to reclaim the crispy crown. When Dwayne takes in his troubled nephew however, it becomes a recipe for disaster. Suddenly, a first place trophy isn’t the only thing Cordell risks losing. Steve H. Broadnax III directed this sizzling world premiere from Residency 5 playwright Katori Hall (Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho).”
2021 Pulitzer Prize Finalists included:
Circle Jerk, by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley. “A contemporary satire featuring outrageous situations and language repurposed from the internet to skewer online culture and question what identities we have permission to claim.”
About Katori Hall
Olivier Award-winning and two-time Tony-nominated Memphis-native Katori Hall is the bookwriter and co-producer of the West End and Broadway hit, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. She’s also the executive producer and showrunner of P-VALLEY, the breakout Starz drama based on her play Pussy Valley.
Hall’s latest piece, The Hot Wing King, premiered in Spring 2020 at the Signature Theatre, rounding out her three-play residency. She is, perhaps, best known for The Mountaintop. The play, which fictionalizes the last night in Martin Luther King’s life, won the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2010 before opening on Broadway in October 2011 to critical acclaim. Hall’s other works include the award-winning Hurt Village, Hoodoo Love, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, Our Lady of Kibeho, and The Blood Quilt. She is also the director of the award-winning short, ARKABUTLA.
Hall is an alumna of Columbia University, ART at Harvard University, and Juilliard. She’s also a graduate of the Sundance Episodic Lab’s inaugural class, the Sundance Screenwriting Lab, and Ryan Murphy’s Half Foundation Directing Program. Hall has been published in publications such as The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She is a proud member of the Ron Brown Scholar Program and the Coca-Cola Scholar Program.
In addition to her Laurence Olivier Award, Hall’s other awards include a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, the Columbia University John Jay Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement, National Black Theatre’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award.
