PlayMakers' Production of Eboni Booth's Primary Trust Demonstrates Why It Won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama

This article was published by Triangle Review on 5 February 2025.

If you are in need of a happy cry and, let's face it, we all are right now -- you must go see PlayMakers Repertory Company's production of Primary Trust, playing now through Sunday, Feb. 15th, in UNC-Chapel Hill at the landmark Paul Green Theatre. At the conclusion of the Saturday, Feb. 7th, performance, it seemed every member of the audience had tears in their eyes and a smile on their face.

Primary Trust‍ was written by New York City writer and actress and Juilliard playwriting fellow Eboni Booth and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The play -- which tells the story of an African-American suburban bookstore worker with an imaginary friend, who gets laid off and applies for a new job at the Primary Trust bank -- has been praised for being "absorbing, funny, and ultimately stunning;" "pretty darn near to a perfect play" (Tim Teeman, Daily Beast); and an experience that will "restore your faith in theatre's elemental storytelling powers" (The Observer).

That said, a great script does not guarantee a great production. For that, a great cast is needed. And a good set certainly doesn't hurt.

In PlayMakers' production, the set is comprised of waist-high buildings in a playground-like model of fictional downtown Cranberry, a medium-sized suburb east of Rochester, New York. There are a library, two banks, a post office, a bookstore, a grocery store, and dining options that span from New York's oldest tiki hut (Wally's) to a fancy French bistro (Le Pousselet). There are no cell phone towers, because this is a time before cell phones existed. As the action of the play proceeds, characters lift the roofs of buildings to retrieve props and pull the walls back to reveal and sit on seats around the resulting tables and desks. It's an unusual and effective way to impress the time and place, both individual and communal, on the audience.

The main character and narrator is a 38-year-old man named Kenneth, played by Nate John Mark, who works in the bookstore and eventually the bank. Kenneth generally avoids the company of other people, excepting his imaginary friend Bert, played by Samuel Ray Gates. Kenneth and Bert get drunk in the tiki restaurant every night.

Though sound designer and composer Alex Thompson appears from time to time as the appropriately low-profile musician at Wally's, all of the other characters -- the wait staff, bookstore owner, bank manager, and customers -- are expertly and sometimes near simultaneously played by Rasool Jahan and Jeffrey Blair Cornell. Jahan and Cornell provide heartwarming comic relief as they spontaneously transition between their unique roles, sometimes starting a sentence as one character and ending it as another, without confusing the audience and without overacting. It is delightful to see multiple personalities played by a single performer, particularly when it's done so well.

Nate John Mark and Samuel Ray Gates are the undeniable stars of the performance, portraying the emotionally disturbed Kenneth and his imaginary friend Bert, respectively, with raw honesty and childlike kindness that cannot help but draw the audience's empathy and endearment. Gates nails his gentle, parental, and mentoring role, making Bert as real to the audience as he is to Kenneth, without letting either forget that he is, in fact, imaginary.

Nate John Mark literally transforms into the understandably (if you go to a performance you'll learn why) childlike and mentally disturbed Kenneth, intimately drawing the audience into his daily world and immediately eliciting their compassionate concern. Though the first half of the play may seem tedious in the slice-of-life way, it progresses to a surprisingly meaningful, almost spiritual conclusion as Kenneth courageously opens his heart and his life to the special people who take the time to know, understand, and emotionally support him.

From Kenneth's lonely and mundane existence to his hesitant, painful, and ultimately fulfilling establishment of real, loving human relationships, Nate John Mark viscerally manifests the contradictory fear of and need for human connection in all of us. Mark's connection with audience members is palpable, such that, by the end of the play, Kenneth's emotional cleansing has become their own.

Director NJ Agwuna, scenic and costume designer Lex Liang, lighting designer Eric Norbury, sound designer Alex Thompson, vocal coach Tia James, production technical director Roark -- every member of the artistic team should be proud of the emotional depth that they have conjured on a mere three-dimensional stage.

Don't let PlayMakers' warning that "Primary Trust contains strong language and mature themes" dissuade you from attending one of their remaining performances. The strong language is minimal and appropriate, and the mature themes are ones that even pre-teenagers will identify with. You owe it to yourself to see why Primary Trust won a Pulitzer Prize.