English, an Off-Broadway Play Starring Legends of Tomorrow's Tala Ashe, Wins a Pulitzer Prize
Sanaz Toossi, an Iranian-American playwright, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for drama for her play English. The show, which was directed by Knud Adams, ran off-Broadway last year, and starred DC's Legends of Tomorrow standout Tala Ashe in the lead role of Elham, a smart and assertive student who butts heads with her English language teacher in an Iranian adult education class. The play has earned praise from critics since it debuted, and was nominated for numerous Drama Desk awards, including one Oustanding Actress in a play for Ashe, Outstanding Play, Outstanding Director of a Play (Knud Adams), Outstanding Scenic Design For a Play (Marsha Ginsberg), and Outstanding Lighting Design For a Play (Reza Behjat).
English won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play in 2022, the Obie Award for Best New Play that same year, and Toossi earned the Horton Foote Award from the Dramatists Guild of America. Marjan Neshat, who starred as English teacher Marjan in the play, also earned Drama Desk's Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Award, for her performances in both English and Sylvia Khoury's Selling Kabul.
English centers on four students studying for an English language test in Tehran, each having their own background and reasons for wanting to learn English. Each thinks that the new skill and the ability to relocate will be life-changing, and the play examines their lives, Iranian culture, and the complicated relationships that can develop between adult students in a stressful situation.
You can see a video promoting its initial run at the Atlantic Theater below.
The play took place entirely in and around the classroom, which was built inside of a two-sided box (featuring a floor, ceiling, desks, chairs, whiteboard, and a TV with a DVD/VCR combo), which changed orientation depending on the scene. Ashe and Neshat starred alongside Ava Lalezarzadeh, Pooya Mohseni, and Hadi Tabbal.
On Sugarland by Aleshea Harris and The Far Country by Lloyd Suh were named Pulitzer finalists in the category.
Ashe joined the cast of DC's Legends of Tomorrow in 2017, joining the cast in the 2017 episode "Zari." In 2018, she became a fan-favorite after the episode "Here I Go Again," in which her character was stuck in a time loop, and she had to relive the same day over and over (complete with overt references to Groundhog Day and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect"). That year, Ashe was nominated for ComicBook.com's Golden Issue Award for Best TV Actress, and Legends of Tomorrow won our award for Best Ensemble Cast.