Primary Trust
by Eboni Booth

Off-Broadway
Primary Trust Book Cover
Primary Trust Cover

Highlights

90 mins 1990s Role(s) for Black Actor(s) Unit Set/Multiple Settings Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes Comedy

Awards & Recognition

Pulitzer Prize

Winner! 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Synopsis

Primary Trust; A deeply affecting stage play about the careful structures we build to contain oceans of feeling and what happens when those structures begin to crumble.

Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Press Reviews

"Best Theater of 2023! “The glory of both the writing and acting was in letting us experience the character’s sadness and, even more, the hard work behind his efforts to stay afloat in a painful world."

— The New York Times

"Eboni Booth’s portrait of one man's loneliness and the danger of coping mechanisms will restore your faith in theater’s elemental storytelling powers. And make you cry... Booth’s fine-grained portrait of loneliness and the danger of coping mechanisms is neither grief porn nor a therapeutic fantasy."

— The Observer

"NYC’s best new play... Beautifully written... a 95-minute, intermissionless, buffed-to-gleaming jewel, following the life of a handsome, charming man named Kenneth... who – capsized early in life by a horrifically traumatic event – struggles, mulls, deflects, and cheerfully and not-so-cheerfully interrogates how to progress with his life in the suburb of Cranberry, New York."

— Daily Beast

"[A] tender, delicately detailed portrait... As in her superstore dark comedy Paris, Booth again probes the half-dread of working-class Black characters in a one-freeway-exit corner of the Northeast."

— The New York Times

"Carefully constructed... Buoyed by a broader discussion of who society leaves behind and at the margins, Primary Trust is an intimate character piece handled with tenderness."

— New York Theatre Guide

Characters

Character
Bert

Male, Black, late 30s-40s

Corrina / Wally’S Waiter / Bank Customers

Female, Black, 30s-40s

Clay / Sam / Le Pousselet Bartender

Male, any race, 50s-60s

Kenneth

Male, Black, late 30s

Videos

Primary Trust – Roundabout Theatre Company Trailer

Publication

Publisher Nick Hern Books
Year 2025
ISBN-13 9780573710971
ISBN-10 057371097X

Primary Trust is a comedy play written by Eboni Booth and published by Nick Hern Books (2025).

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Rating

4.2

353 ratings · 1k reviews

Review

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