Transcript for Sanaz Toossi and Lynn Nottage: The Politics of Playwriting

A quick warning: this episode includes cursing.

Recorded in New York City.

Host, Nicole Carroll: This is the Pulitzer on the Road Podcast, connecting Pulitzer Prize winners with audiences around the country. I'm your guide, Nicole Carroll. I’m a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board and a faculty member at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. 

Each spring, 23 Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for distinguished journalism, books, drama and music. On this podcast, we talk with many of the winners and hear the stories behind their prize-winning work.

In 2023, Sanaz Toossi won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play called English.

Sanaz Toossi: English is set in a classroom in Iran. In a TOEFL classroom. The TOEFL is the test of English as a foreign language. So if you're applying to a school in an English-speaking country and you're from a non-English speaking country, you have to basically prove that you can speak and communicate well in English. So you have to pass this test, and it's about a teacher and her four students. And everyone has a different relationship with language and what it means to leave a language, which is connected to this idea of like, what does it mean to leave where you're from?

Nicole Carroll: Sanaz started writing English when she was in graduate school at New York University.

Sanaz Toossi: I wrote English in response to the first Trump administration's travel ban, also colloquially known as the Muslim ban. Just out of fury of the anti-immigrant sentiment.

Nicole Carroll: Since then, the play has opened off-Broadway in New York, and in theaters in Chicago, Washington, DC, and London. This winter, the play opened on Broadway. And on this episode of “Pulitzer on the Road,” we’re going to take you behind the scenes with Sanaz as she prepares for her premiere. Then, Sanaz will be joined by two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage to discuss their origin stories as playwrights, the ways they bring joy and humor to difficult topics and how they deal with reviews.

Sanaz Toossi: I was a hot mess this morning. I didn't get enough sleep. I remembered I had to say something today, so I quickly wrote something down.

Nicole Carroll: It's the first day of rehearsal. The cast and crew form a circle of about 40 people. And after everyone introduces themselves, it’s Sanaz’s turn to speak.

Sanaz Toossi: This is the most open-hearted group of artists I've ever known. And when we gathered three years ago, we had no idea what we had. We were scared shitless and we were just a revolving door of quiet panic attacks. [laughter] And we were only here to tell a story that we all believed in and knew. And we held hands, closed our eyes and leapt. I know with unshakable certainty that every single one of you belongs on Broadway. Every single one of us. And not because you're Middle Eastern or diverse. It's because you're an artist of high caliber. You are a master of your craft and it’s ‘cause you're good.

Nicole Carroll: She goes on to talk about how they’ll be opening this play on Broadway in the early days of Trump’s second term. It’s a time when the threat to immigrants feels very present again.

Sanaz Toossi: We may not change anyone's mind, and we're not here to change anyone's mind. We're here because we will dictate the terms of who we are and we will draw the contours of our identity. We will question the identity itself. We will express ourselves as tender and contradictory and fallible, even if it doesn't change the world, and we know our one play cannot and should not change the world. We should do this play anyway because I'm not ready to recant my belief that what we do matters, and I do not want to live in a world without story, without make-believe, where we don't go on a stage and tell the truth about who we are. So we belong here. We are exactly where we should be. Anyway, I love you all. I love you all. And get ready because rewrites are coming. [laughter]

Nicole Carroll: They have about one month before the show goes into previews. And right now they're figuring out how best to occupy the space of a big Broadway stage.

Sanaz Toossi: We kind of just get up on our feet and we start blocking, choreograph, so to speak, where everyone goes. We're a classroom play. We have a lot of chairs. Where do those chairs go? Where is everyone sitting? When a student is presenting, where will they be standing? I'm going to do some more rewrites. Right now, I think my job is a little bit like – I’m their cheerleader right now and making like micro-corrections as needed.

Nicole Carroll: It’s not just the space that’s bigger. Everything feels bigger with a Broadway show. Including her own vulnerability.

Sanaz Toossi: To be a theater artist means you show your whole ass. You show your whole ass every night. People can get up and leave your play. You can get flamed in a review. You can be misunderstood. And when it works, it is a reason to live. This is, like, I think, the reason I was put on Earth. Creating something together every night in a room full of people that can leave. And doing it means you can kind of do anything. [laughs]

Nicole Carroll: A few weeks later, in January of 2025, Sanaz made her way to Broadway for opening night. It was exciting, of course… but it was also impossible for her to ignore what was happening in the larger world outside the theater.

Sanaz Toossi: Inauguration Day was a few days ago, and this week, like, this question of birthright citizenship has been up in the air, like, I am a citizen because of birthright citizenship, you know, which is really unsettling and strange and really, really scary. And our artistic director is asking me to be a part of the pre-show speech. And the only thing I know to say is, you know, I am the daughter of two immigrants. [crying] And it's why I wrote the show and it's been like my artistic North Star has been to write us with dignity, and I'm so proud of it. But also, like I think all artists are asking, like, what does it mean? What does it mean like when the world is burning? How do you make art? What do you talk about? Because today is opening, and I feel joyful, like I have also opened the door to sadness.

Nicole Carroll: After the show, Sanaz rushed backstage to be with her cast.

Sanaz Toossi: For them to be on Broadway, like, really means something. We've come so far and like, tonight, we get to like celebrate that without any doubt.

Nicole Carroll: All their hard work paid off. After opening night, English received rave reviews.

Lynn Nottage: It's one of the best plays that I've seen on Broadway in a very long time.

Nicole Carroll: That’s two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage.

Lynn Nottage: It lived really beautifully on that stage. I love the way that the director opened it up and the scent and that and those actors really took the stage you know they felt immensely comfortable up there and I felt like I was in good hands at every single moment and that’s a real accomplishment.

Nicole Carroll: Lynn and Sanaz sat down together a few weeks after opening night. That’s after the break.

Nicole Carroll: Lynn Nottage has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Drama. The first was in 2009 for her play Ruined, a drama set in wartime Congo. And in 2017, she was awarded the prize for Sweat, a very different play about union workers in America. Lynn and Sanaz sat down together in February of 2025.    

Lynn Nottage: Hello, Sanaz. I'm so happy to be here with you and have a moment to chat. 

Sanaz Toossi: Thank you, Lynn, for being here. This is so cool, so wonderful for me. 

Lynn Nottage: We're going to talk about your play English, which recently opened on Broadway to absolutely amazing reviews and congratulations, the play was wonderful. It was immersive and provocative and immensely moving in the end. And the play has had an incredible journey. But before we get into that, I'm really curious about your origin story. I understand that you were thinking about going into law school, but then you decided to study playwriting. And I very similarly was thinking about going to medical school and then decided to study playwriting. So I'm wondering what made you change your mind? 

Sanaz Toossi: You know, when I graduated college, I was like I was a disaster. I was totally lost. I had – I suddenly had adult acne. Things were just not working out for me. And so I applied to law school, got in, and my body seized up with terror. So I deferred a year. And I said, you know what, I had this trip planned to Iran. And when I was there in my grandmother's house, I had this, like, urge to write about the beauty of her house, and the beauty of the women around me, and also what it meant for me to be Iranian and American. So I wrote these plays, applied to grad school for dramatic writing or playwriting. And I said, “if I get into grad school with a scholarship, I'm going to go try to be a writer. And I will give it my best shot and never look back. And if I don't get into grad school, I'm going to go be a lawyer and be a happy lawyer. And I'm going to live in a nice apartment and, like, have all the shoes that I want.” And I got into NYU with a scholarship for dramatic writing, and it’s funny – I still think there's a life in which I could have been a very happy lawyer. I actually really loved that there's something about, like, law and like preparing a case. This is about preparing a story. So it felt like there was a lot of overlap. I love logic and fact-finding. Yeah. And what was the pivot for you from medical school to playwriting? 

Lynn Nottage: I believe that we are intended to have many journeys in this lifetime. And I think for myself, playwriting was just one of those journeys. And I've been fortunate to have done other things. I worked in human rights for a number of years and did a lot of power temping for many, many years. 

Sanaz Toossi: Absolutely.

Lynn Nottage: I don't think I was ever meant to be a doctor. I don't know that I ever wanted to be a doctor. But coming out of high school and going into college, I was always very good at math and sciences, and so I think naturally I was pushed into that pocket. And then I began taking playwriting courses and writing courses, and I thought these are the things that are giving me joy, and I want to live in this space longer. And I think that's why I pivoted is that histology and chemistry were not making me happy. 

Sanaz Toossi: Of course. Is there anything though, in the like doctor-writer Venn diagram, is there any overlap between those circles?

Lynn Nottage: I'm sure there are overlaps. I think there's overlaps with science and math and music with playwriting and sort of my love of research, but sort of circling back to your time in Iran, I'm curious, what drew you to writing plays? 

Sanaz Toossi: I don't know if it's because my mom's side of the family are, um, a lot of musicians, we have a lot of people with great ears, people who are really attuned to rhythm. And then on my dad's side, my grandfather loved poetry as many, many Iranians do. We come from this great lineage of poetry. So I think there's always been something to me about, like, gathering in a group and rhythm and the way conversation overlaps and the way conversation becomes music, that felt like that's what I love about writing. And that is something I think we do best in theater and something about an ensemble. When I think about my time in Iran, I just think of like 13 people in a room in [a] one-set location. It just felt like I was always living in a play anyway. So it was just easiest to transfer it to theater, which I think is our most magical, most ancient form anyway.

Lynn Nottage: And so after getting back from Iran, you went to NYU and in your last year there you wrote English. So when you were thinking about writing this play did you do any research? Had you been in one of these classrooms? 

Sanaz Toossi: I've taught English a little and I've been taught other languages. So all of that lived in the play. I've never taken the TOEFL, but all my cousins have. So I sort of pieced together everyone's trauma with the language. And I grew up speaking Farsi in the house. Farsi is my mother tongue, but English is the language that quickly came to dominate the one I use most, the one I had to use most and the one I suppose I feel most comfortable in, even though I don't feel very comfortable in it at all. And I also studied abroad in France. So I had the experience of speaking horrible French to French people – the experience of what that meant. 

Lynn Nottage: I'm really interested in how you sculpted the language of English because you have this wonderful conceit where when people are speaking English, they're speaking it with a very heavy Persian accent. And when they're speaking Farsi, they're speaking it without an accent. And so how did you land on that? Did that come on the page or did you discover that in rehearsal?

Sanaz Toossi: I thought, if this play is going to be about how hard it is to learn a new language, how dehumanizing it can be to live with an accent. And if I'm doing that specifically for an American monolingual audience, well, then they have to have full access to these people, which means part of that play is going to have to be in an English that is most recognizable and most “human” to my audience. And also we're very familiar with the conceit of like, you know, when you see a film adaptation of Anna Karenina and they’re British actors speaking English, well, you know, those people are actually speaking Russian, but we slip into that disbelief quite easily. So I felt like there's actually a lot laid out there already for use, but it felt like the most natural thing to do. 

Lynn Nottage: At the end of the play there is a beautiful moment in which we finally do hear Farsi. I was wondering why that was important to you?

Sanaz Toossi: So much of this play I wrote for a specific audience, which I would again, like American monolingual, and this play is also for I needed it to be also for Iranians and for two categories, like Iranians, like my parents who are from Iran and then Iranian Americans, like myself who were born here. There had to be something that was just for us. And that 30 seconds at the end in Farsi is for the Iranians, but it's also a way, I hope, for the American monolingual audience to like sit in discomfort just for 30 seconds because in this play, we like, we've had characters talk about the pain of like having an accent, being misunderstood, not understanding what people are saying. And I wanted that audience to sit in what it's like to be in the outside of language, the outside of hegemony for 30 seconds. And I cannot tell you, Lynn, how many people come up to me after and demand subtitles – 

Lynn Nottage: Oh, really? 

Sanaz Toossi: For that scene. I mean, it drives me up the wall. There's no quicker way to get me to want to start a fight with you. And I think if they, I say like, if you ask for subtitles for that scene, you miss the train. I think you miss that whole play. Yeah.

Lynn Nottage: I so agree with you. It was such a powerful moment. And I loved, like, sitting in the audience and having that strange disassociation of, like, oh, suddenly I'm in a world in which I don't understand.

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah and it’s disorientating and and yeah. Is there any question that comes up for you a lot in your plays that prickles you?

Lynn Nottage: For different plays, there are, you know, vexing questions I get asked. I think one of them in particular when I had written Ruined, which is about gender specific human rights abuses. And a lot of the play deals with [a] really difficult, traumatic subject. And I decided that I was going to end with optimism and with beauty. And I was often asked, well, why? And there's a lot of criticism for choosing to have a happy ending. And I’m like I wanted to place these Black women in a position where they could reach toward optimism and joy. And that was really important to me. And if you can't see that, once again, like you, then you missed the whole point of the play. 

Sanaz Toossi: Totally, totally. That's so beautiful. 

Lynn Nottage: I wonder whether you ever feel pressure to write about any specific topic?

Sanaz Toossi: Can I ask you that first? I want to know your answer to this. 

Lynn Nottage: Sure. I mean, I think it’s, yeah, for many years, I'm much older than you. And I think when I came into this business, there was certainly an expectation that I was going to be centering a certain kind of story about Black women. And when I deviated from that, I found that I was criticized for it. And I realized that if I was going to make it in this business I had to always lean into my own truth, even if that truth sometimes made people uncomfortable. And I think that notion is what ultimately liberated me from expectations. 

Sanaz Toossi: Yes, I love, love, love writing about Iranians. So I fit, I think, comfortably with what people expect of me in terms of, like, who I write for. I think maybe similarly, like, what I want to do tonally and what I refuse to do in terms of, like, educating an audience can be upsetting. I think like for a long time, there's this, well, there's still an onus on writers of color, but at least Middle Eastern writers to, like, explain the political situation to the audience. And I really refuse to do so. And I think humor opens us up to new thoughts and ideas. And I always – the comment I get to sometimes is like, oh, wow, that play was funny. And it’s like, well why shouldn’t it be? And yeah that is something I bring to the table as a writer that maybe like you think doesn't jibe with the identity of it. You know, it's just.

Lynn Nottage: That is so true, particularly about humor. I find that so often audiences are surprised that the work about tough subject matter can be funny.

Sanaz Toossi: Yes! And that, like, in a play with tough subject matter, there can be a happy ending. And that, like, that also can't be true for people who we think of as having “hard lives,” that they also don't have happy moments and moments of dignity or moments of surprise and humor. It just always has blown my mind that people forget, like, oh, even in times of war, you're, like, worried about what you're going to wear and you're still vain. You're still a full person. 

Lynn Nottage: You know, I'm so glad that you brought that up and sort of harkening back to Ruined, I remember when I was doing interviews with women who were fleeing the armed conflict in Congo, and I was asking them to recount their stories, but I was always surprised by the moments of levity and how easily they had access to their smiles. And that just planted a seed in me. When I was sitting down to write, I thought, I have to make sure that that is embedded in the storytelling, that these are women who can be going through the most difficult thing, but they can still find their humor and they can still smile and embrace each other. 

Sanaz Toossi: Yes. I wonder why for some people it’s so hard to imagine that for other people. That their lives are also full of surprise. I don’t know.

Lynn Nottage: But English is really funny. 

Sanaz Toossi: Thank you. 

Lynn Nottage: But I read somewhere that you wrote it when you were very angry and thinking about Trump’s travel ban against Muslims.

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah.

Lynn Nottage: And this country right now is in an extremely polarized moment in lots of anti-immigrant sentiments. And so I'm wondering how you're assimilating that into your own writing or how you're thinking about art or how you're thinking about responding?

Sanaz Toossi: You know, I thought I had changed a lot as a writer, and I think I have. And then so to return to this moment, you know, we opened on [January] 23rd and Inauguration Day was on the 20th, and I suddenly thought, oh, here we are again. And I wrote English as, like – I describe it as – like my scream into the void. And I don't think eight years later, I don't have the urge to write from that place anymore. I don't know if it's just, like, I'm a little older and a little more tired, and I am still angry, but my anger looks different now. I think now I have to write from a different place. I wrote English for a specific audience. I'm now questioning, like, what it means to write for that audience. The assumption being, if I write us with full dignity, can I change how people think about us? I have no answer to this question. I’m in flux about it. Do you – what are your thoughts on this? 

Lynn Nottage: No, I mean, I feel like it's really difficult to figure out how to process this moment and how to respond to this moment. And I feel I'm moving through so many complicated emotions and, like, how do you capture that and turn it into a piece of art that's coherent is my struggle, you know, because I just feel adrift in some strange way. And I remember I opened my show, Sweat, I think maybe a week in New York before Trump was elected. And the next day, there was a palpable difference in the way in which the audience received the play.

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah. 

Lynn Nottage: I think that they left with more questions than they did before. I think when, you know, prior to Trump being elected, I think people were very passive in the way in which they received the play. And I'm wondering, did you feel any, like, palpable difference in the way in which your audience responded to the play this go round?

Sanaz Toossi: This time, our audience – I have found – connects with Elham so much more. And she's the one who holds all the anger of the play of, like, this is not fair. The world is not fair. It's not fair that I have to do this. And her arguments, I think right off the bat of like, people are going to make fun of us when we go somewhere where we're not welcome. I think immediately an audience believes her.

Lynn Nottage: I really responded to that character. I found her to be incredibly resonant. You know, I liked her righteous anger. And I like that she so wanted to speak English, but she didn't want to give up her identity and her own language. And I think that that's something that so many people who come to this country and [are] asked to assimilate and themselves grapple with even more so now in which people are going to begin to hide their identity for safety reasons, which is really scary. So that's why I think that that character speaks to audiences because embedded in her is so much of the struggle which people are going through right now. 

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah, she really names the injustice. I love her. 

Lynn Nottage: And so on the first day of rehearsal, you gave a speech to the cast and crew. And I just want to play a short clip.

Sanaz Toossi [archival audio]: I know with unshakable certainty, that every single one of you belongs on Broadway, every single one of us. And not because you're Middle Eastern or diverse, it's because you're an artist of high caliber, you are a master of your craft, and it’s ‘cause you're good. 

Lynn Nottage: Can you just talk a little bit about writing that part of speech and what it meant to you in that moment to be standing in that rehearsal room on the verge of going to Broadway to tell this particular story? 

Sanaz Toossi: I will say, I did not want to go to Broadway because it scared me because I thought what made our play special is that it's quiet and it's restrained, I think. And a refrain I would repeat to myself is, like, we shouldn't be on Broadway. And I had to ask myself why I was so comfortable, devaluing our play like that. I've come up against it. I'm sure you have to – the idea that I fill a diversity slot in a season. I know that's complicated. And I also, at some point, had to stop talking to myself, like I didn't deserve to be in all those rooms that I was in. And I decided going into rehearsal that I was going to stop saying we shouldn't be here – it’s crazy that we’re here. Like that cast has – they all made their Broadway debuts, which is incredible. It's also wild to me – those – all five of those actors, this should not be their first time on Broadway. They are so good and they are just often getting relegated to their own version of, like, the diversity slot. So I decided that first day of rehearsal, like, we're not a Cinderella story. Like, we are – we belong here. We worked so hard to be here. Our play is just as good as any other play. It's not crazy that we're here. It's not wild that we're here. And I just wanted to put an end to that mostly for myself. So we wouldn't have to like apologize for somewhere that should be really happy to have us.

Lynn Nottage: You’re so right. There's so much to unpack there. And I understand that complicated and very intrusive feeling that we're constantly pushing up against. And would you call yourself a political playwright? Or is that a word that you push back on? I'm just really curious because it's a question that I often get asked. 

Sanaz Toossi: On this question I constantly contradict myself. I used to really push back on it. I would say, no, why am I a political writer? And why aren't white writers political writers? Why do they get to just write about the small, specific thing that is the human experience? Why do you need to talk about the Green Revolution in Iran in the program for my play? Even though I do think you should. You know, but I pushed back on it because I thought it was unfair. And I, to some degree, think it's lazy in that it's really easy to see a Middle Eastern writer and tag their work as hyper-political. It's another way I think of dehumanization. However, English was written out of a political urge. It is written with the intention of advocating for a certain group of people, which I think makes the play political. Like I think advocacy makes a play political in some way. And in terms of content of the play, yes, in some way, the political circumstances are dictating the action in the room so it – yes, it must be a political play. And by that criteria, are not most plays political as well? That's where I find the tension. And that's why I don't know that I can give an answer.

Lynn Nottage: Yeah. I mean, I think that the answer to the question is it is embedded in the intent. 

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah. Intent. 

Lynn Nottage: Intent of the play. I think that there are plays that can be about politics that aren't political because the goal isn't really transformation or to illuminate or to press people to think differently about a subject. You know and I do think that plays that are political sort of disrupt the status quo. You know and it doesn't have to be loudly. It can be gently. 

Sanaz Toossi: So do you believe yourself to be a political writer?

Lynn Nottage: You know I do embrace that. I embrace it without shame. I do think that when I sit down to write plays, I do it with intention. And I center people who don't generally get centered on the American stage. And I know the mere act of doing that is a political act. And it's going to be more political as our voices are censored.

Sanaz Toossi: Yes. Do you ever, though, find tension, of course, in the way you are written about? 

Lynn Nottage: Yeah, of course. I mean, I can't control how people write about me. But what I can control is what I choose to say and how I frame my own arguments. And I do think that we are in a culture in which plays that are sort of unabashedly political make some people, critics, uncomfortable. And they often get labeled as didactic or, you know, they get slapped with labels because it's easier to ignore it and dismiss it than to engage with the complications of what's on stage.

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah.

Lynn Nottage: I'm really curious about what you're working on now and whether you're writing for theater or television or film or are you writing a musical?

Sanaz Toossi: I really want to write a musical. I would love to. Someone should reach out to me. I am writing for TV and film right now – I didn’t write a play for a long time. And then the last year, I finally have found my plays again. In 2022, when we did English Off-Broadway for the first time and then right after that, I did another one of my plays, Wish You Were Here, at Playwrights Horizons. And it was funny to go from English, which was acclaimed, to Wish You Were Here, which was not, but it was just my favorite play of mine, which is always how it goes. It's how it goes. It was also a great lesson to learn, to be, like, you know, lauded and then immediately spanked. I am really glad I learned that, and I love Wish You Were Here. And I think after all the good things people said about me really got in my head. And I thought, like, in some way that I was beholden to those very, you know. complimentary adjectives, all those nice things people said. So I couldn't write for a long time. And I know that, well, I think, I suspect that English might be the play everyone ultimately knows me for. That's okay. Every writer has that play. It's so natural. Yeah. It is what it is. 

Lynn Nottage: You know, it's great. 

Sanaz Toossi: It's amazing to even be known. 

Lynn Nottage: But also have that play because there are many people who never do.

Sanaz Toossi: Exactly. To even have a calling card is mind-boggling. So now I'm okay with whatever I do next. If it's totally [shat] on, that's okay. I just have to like it. And now I'm just trying to figure out what's actually important to me, and I found, like, it is still very important to me to write Iranians in [however] my voice, whatever that means. And I would just like to push myself a little further and like thinking about what I bring to the form, how I change it, if I can change it, what excites me about it. So that's the challenge right now. 

Lynn Nottage: It's so true. I mean, all we can ever do is really lean into the pleasure of writing, regardless of what the outcome is. And I always tell my students that to be a playwright, that you have to move between grandiosity and despair and be really comfortable in both spaces. Because over the course of your career, you will at some point experience both things. 

Sanaz Toossi: Both are home.

Lynn Nottage: Yeah. 

Sanaz Toossi: Absolutely.

Lynn Nottage: It's so true. You know, I remember one of my early plays was so badly reviewed that one reviewer called it an absolute zero. And then another reviewer said at the very bottom of his column, “I'm not going to even bother to review this play.”

Sanaz Toossi: Oh my God, the gall. Okay. 

Lynn Nottage: And then you have to get up in the morning and your friends call you and they talk to you like you've actually lost a limb. It's like, I'm still intact. But also one of my other favorite things is one of my mother's best friends used to Xerox copies of my reviews, circle them – particularly the bad ones – and say, “I don't agree.” I'm like, thank you for sending me my bad reviews.

Sanaz Toossi: That is really – thank you. What I wanted, I wanted to see them up close again. Circled in red ink. 

Lynn Nottage: Highlighted. 

Sanaz Toossi: Just so I can visually remember it forever. Do you – can I ask you, what is your relationship to reviews?

Lynn Nottage: When I was a young writer, I used to read them. And there was a time when there were certain reviewers who I valued their voices because I thought that they had interesting things to say about the play. And it wasn't just merely about critiquing it, but really trying to understand what it is that the writer was getting at and whether you know you succeeded in doing that. And so I always found those kinds of reviews interesting and helpful. And then at some point I thought reviews aren't helping me anymore. You know, they’re making me feel bad about myself, even the good ones. 

Sanaz Toossi: Even the good ones. 

Lynn Nottage: And so I just decided I'm not going to read them at all. And I've had a healthier relationship to my work ever since. 

Sanaz Toossi: Yes, absolutely. Good.

Lynn Nottage: Do you read the reviews? 

Sanaz Toossi: When we did English the first time, my friends would send me, like, you should read this one. And I would read those. And those really messed with my head. I should not have read those. The bad reviews, like, I accidentally read some bad reviews for Wish You Were Here. And I found it really easy to shrug it off. Like, well, that's, you're wrong. And I know what I'm doing. I really like the play. My actors really love the play so I trusted that. I learned quickly not to read my good reviews. Nothing good came out of it. 

Lynn Nottage: But sometimes I got a bad review for one play that so enraged me. I don't know why it got under my skin, but I thought that the reviewer really got it wrong. And I actually wrote to him.

Sanaz Toossi: Good.

Lynn Nottage: To tell him all the reasons why he got it wrong. And he actually wrote a letter of apology – 

Sanaz Toossi: Wow. 

Lynn Nottage: To me. And he said, “You know, after re-engaging with the work, after living through the election of Trump–”

Sanaz Toossi: So this was a review on some Sweat.

Lynn Nottage:  “I was wrong.”

Sanaz Toossi: Wow.

Lynn Nottage: Because he was really dismissive of the subject matter, saying, “I don't understand why, you know, we're in the room with these people right now and why we're talking about unions. And, you know, this is a play for the past.” And I wrote to him and said, “I don't know which America you live in, but this is the America that I live in, in which we're sort of living in a world where we're fractured across economic and racial lines.” And he actually did apologize in the press. 

Sanaz Toossi: Great. 

Lynn Nottage: And came back and re-evaluated the play, which I appreciated.

Sanaz Toossi: I appreciate him. I also wanna make like – I have to come clean. I really was able to shrug those bad reviews off. And the day after Wish You Were Here did not get a good review, Marjan, Marjan Neshat, who's my muse, I guess, she's in all my plays. She’s in English and she was in Wish You Were Here. She texted me. She said, “Let's talk. I know you read it.” And I said, “I don't care. I don't need to talk.” She said, “Call me.” I said, “I don't want to talk.” She said, “Please, just call me.” I called her. She goes, “Hi, how are you?” I burst into tears. You know, like that's also true. It hurts and then it doesn't.

Lynn Nottage: Yeah. But I feel like that's part of the muscle that we have to develop as writers, particularly if we're going to tackle tough subject matters, that there are always going to be people who are not going to respond for a multitude of times. 

Sanaz Toossi: Good advice for all of us. 

Lynn Nottage: I think that many people are going to wonder a little bit about the journey of a playwright. I know that when I made the decision to quit my full-time job and write full-time, that in order to survive, I had to do a lot of different things to cull together a living 

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah.

Lynn Nottage: And so I’m just really curious when you decided that you were going to be a playwright, what were the first steps that you took?

Sanaz Toossi: So I went to grad school with a scholarship. I think that relieved me of a lot because I didn't have to immediately start making a bunch of money to pay back my loans. I lived at home for a long time and I worked. So I was saving money and working and writing my plays. So immediately, I think that put me a few steps ahead. And I had a feeling that I should put all my eggs in one basket. So I worked really, really hard on English and decided it was going to be worth it even if it was just my calling card. Even if it wasn't going to be produced, it was going to get me a lot of opportunities because I thought it really represented what I can do. I think it's worth it for writers being able to name what you bring to the table. I’m theatrical and I’m funny, and I think the best lesson I learned was learning how to talk about myself and being really confident in who I was as a writer. In that year that I did two plays back to back, I did not make good money. The number that's coming to my head is so low, and I think it's right, but I don't want to say it because I don't know it's true. Not a livable, not a livable wage, just to say it clearly. And so now, like many playwrights, I sort of subsidize my playwriting with TV and film. I love working in TV and film. And it’s – what I love about it, it's like a group effort. Playwriting is solitary. It's also what I love about playwriting. But that is how I financially make it work. 

Lynn Nottage: How did winning the Pulitzer change things for you? And what was that like? Where were you? How did you find out? 

Sanaz Toossi: I was at SFO [Airport]. I had just seen English at Berkeley. So I was flying back home to LA where I lived at the time. I knew it was Pulitzer Day and I had to pretend it wasn't. I was like, I'm just going to have a normal day. I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not going to let myself be disappointed. Like I'm just going to have a normal day and if whatever happens, happens. And I got through security and got a call from my agent. She told me. I said, “Rachel, are you sure?” She goes, “Hold on.” She played it back. She goes, “No, yeah, I’m, I'm sure.” And I was at an airport and I'm, you know, I came of age after 9/11. So I'm really – that's the lesson you learn is play it really cool in an airport. And then, you know, I boarded a plane and my phone died. And then I went, and then I came back home, and I was so overwhelmed. So I had to just watch something to turn my brain off because I was in my apartment alone. And so I turned on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills because I thought I was going to have a panic attack. And I kind of made a vow in that moment. I said, I said, “What I'm not going to do is take this away from myself. I'm not going to say, oh, you got it. You won because of the – I'm just going to let myself enjoy this.” And then I, after the ceremony, had a huge party. So, I celebrated. It of course opened, you know, these doors to career opportunities later, like I got to staff on TV shows because of English. How about you? Both times?

Lynn Nottage: Well, the first time it was really a surprise because my play was about the Democratic Republic of Congo. And by definition, it should not have won the Prize because it's supposed to be about – 

Sanaz Toossi: American life.

Lynn Nottage: American themes. And so, you know, I changed it all for us. 

Sanaz Toossi: Yeah. Thank you, Lynn.

Lynn Nottage: But I was at home, so I wasn't expecting it. And the call for me actually came in from Associated Press – 

Sanaz Toossi: Oh my God.

Lynn Nottage: And the guy was on the other line and he says, “How does it feel”? I'm like, “Oh! Me?” And so I was shocked. 

Sanaz Toossi: I think the more profound change in my life is that something happened to me that I thought would never happen to me. I never thought I would win a Pulitzer. I thought, “Oh my God, how great it would be to get to be a finalist one day.” But that had happened. And it happened pretty, I guess, with my – English isn't my first play, but with my first produced play, I had to think about the ways in which I kept myself, have kept myself small my whole life and how I've let people talk about me as if, like, I belong in the diversity slot because I, you know, I have kind of a Valley girl voice, and I say “like” a lot. My experience growing up is people immediately think I'm dumb. I don't really – I know I'm smart, so I'd never have ever internalized it. But I had to think about shedding, shedding that and owning that I am a writer who should be here. I know what I'm doing. I deserve to be here. And, you know, I'm so grateful that this is what I get to do with my life. And I believe we need artists and writers for democracy and just for living and for humanity. And I am one. So that I would say is like the most profound way I changed my life. 

Nicole Carroll: That’s it for this episode of Pulitzer on the Road.

Thank you to Sanaz Toossi, the 2023 Pulitzer winner in Drama, and to the two-time Pulitzer winning playwright Lynn Nottage. 

For more details about this work and the work of all Pulitzer winners, please visit our website at www.pulitzer.org. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. 

Pulitzer on the Road is a production of the Pulitzer Prize Board and is produced by Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios. 

This show is hosted by me, Nicole Carroll. 

Our senior producer is Justine Daum. Natalie Peart is our associate producer. Production support from Melissa Akiko Slaughter and Eric Mennel. 

Our executive editor is Joel Lovell. 

The head of sound & engineering at Pineapple Street is Raj Makhija. 

This episode was mixed by Marina Paiz, with additional audio engineering by Pedro Alvira. Music licensing by APM. 

Editing, promotion and other support by Pamela Casey, Edward Kliment and Sean Murphy. 

Bari Finkel and Marjorie Miller are our executive producers.