The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
http://www.blackburnprize.org
“The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has done more than any other single force to get plays by women collected and celebrated, but more importantly, produced.” - Marsha Norman, 1983 Winner for Night Mother
"The emergence of women playwrights over the history of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has spearheaded a change in the position of women in every realm of the theater." – Wendy Wasserstein, 1988 Winner for The Heidi Chronicles
The Prize
http://www.blackburnprize.org/prize.aspx
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, established in 1978, is given annually to recognize women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre. The Prize is administered in Houston, London and New York by a board of directors who choose six Judges each year, three from each side of the Atlantic.
The Prize currently awards $70,000 annually to the Finalists:Winner- $25,000, Special Commendation-$10,000, and other Finalists- $5,000. Finalists are the top ten plays. In addition, the Winner receives a signed and numbered Willem de Kooning print made especially for the award. The Special Commendation is given at the discretion of the Judges.
Each year, a specified list of professional theatres throughout the English-speaking world is invited to submit plays for consideration. Plays are received in September, and the award ceremony is held in February or March. Plays must be full-length. Plays are eligible whether or not they have been produced, but any premiere production must have occurred within the preceding calendar year. Previous winners are not eligible.
Scripts receive multiple readings by an international reading committee, resulting in the selection of 10 Finalists. All six judges for the Prize read every Finalist.
Our permanent list of Finalists, numbering well over 300 plays, has become an important resource for theatres interested in new work. As a direct result of being Finalists, many playwrights have received productions, grants and public recognition. The Prize has motivated women to write for the theatre, and has also fostered the interchange of plays between the United States and Britain, Ireland and other English-speaking countries. It has anticipated later recognition. Eight Finalists have subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is now firmly established as a highly regarded international competition. There is every indication that it will continue to grow.
contact: susansmithblackburn@gmail.com
Susan Smith Blackburn Prize © 2015
THE SUSAN SMITH BLACKBURN PRIZE
2014- 2015 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
MAJOR AWARD FOR WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS
CELEBRATES THIRTY- SEVENTH YEAR
“The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has done more than any other single force to get plays by women collected and celebrated, but more importantly, produced.”- Marsha Norman, 1983 Winner for ‘night Mother
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has announced 12 Finalists for its prestigious playwriting award, the oldest and largest prize awarded to women playwrights. Chosen from over 150 nominated plays,
the Finalists are
Lisa D'Amour (U.S.)- Airline Highway
Alice Birch (U.K.)- Revolt. She said. Revolt again.
Alecky Blythe (U.K.)- Little Revolution
Clare Barron (U.S.)- You Got Older
Clara Brennan (U.K.)- Spine
Katherine Chandler (U.K.)-Parallel Lines
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig (U.S.)- The World of Extreme Happiness
Lindsey Ferrentino (U.S.)- Ugly Lies the Bone
Zodwa Nyoni (U.K.)- Boi Boi Is Dead
Heidi Schreck (U.S.)- Grand Concourse
Ruby Rae Spiegel (U.S.)- Dry Land
Tena Štivičić (U.K.and Croatia)- 3 Winters
The Winner of the 2014-2015 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize will be named at the Awards Presentation on March 2 in New York City. The Winner will be awarded a cash prize of $25,000, and will also receive a signed print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Each of the additional Finalists will receive an award of $5,000.
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, co-founded by Emilie S. Kilgore and William Blackburn, honors outstanding new English-language plays by women. Many of the Winners have gone on to receive other honors, including Olivier, Lilly, Evening Standard and Tony Awards for Best Play. Eight Blackburn Finalist plays have subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Houston-based Susan Smith Blackburn Prize reflects the values and interests of Susan Smith Blackburn, noted American actress and writer who lived in London during the last 15 years of her life. She died in 1977 at the age of 42. Over 350 plays have been honored as Finalists since the Prize was instituted in 1977.
In 2013, Prize founder Emilie S. Kilgore was awarded a Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award for her work promoting women playwrights. The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize received the 2010 Theatre Communications Group's National Funder Award. The annual honor goes to a company, foundation or other entity for “leadership and sustained national support of theater in America.”
Last year's Winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Chimerica by Lucy Kirkwood also won the U.K.'s Olivier Award for Best New Play and the Evening Standard Award for Best Play. Subsequent to winning the 2012-2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for The Flick, Annie Baker was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, a Steinberg Playwright Award as well as with the Horton Foote Legacy Project. The Nether by Jennifer Haley, Winner of the 2011-2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, will receive its New York premiere opening February 4 in a production by MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, directed by Anne Kaufmann. In the U.K., the Royal Court's production of The Nether, directed by Jeremy Herrin, is transferring for a run on the West End, set to open on February 23.
Other recipients of the Prize include Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money, Katori Hall’s Hurt Village, Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, Chloe Moss’s This Wide Night, Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's Behzti (Dishonour), Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House, Rona Munro’s Bold Girls, Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman, Julia Cho’s The Language Archive, Gina Gionfriddo's U.S. Drag, Bridget Carpenter's Fall, Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy, Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare, and Moira Buffini's Silence.
The international panel of Judges for the 2014-2015 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize includes, in the U.S., actor Carmen Herlihy, director Liesl Tommy and Chay Yew, artistic director of Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre. U.K. judges are BAFTA and Emmy award-winning actor Rebecca Hall, playwright Rona Munro and National Theatre associate director Bijan Sheibani.
Former judges of The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize over the past thirty-seven years are a Who’s Who of the English-speaking theatre and include Edward Albee, Eileen Atkins, Blair Brown, Zoe Caldwell, Jill Clayburgh, Glenn Close, Harold Clurman, Colleen Dewhurst, Edie Falco, Ralph Fiennes, John Guare, A.R. Gurney, Mel Gussow, David Hare, Jessica Hecht, Judith Ivey, Tony Kushner, Phyllida Lloyd, Francis McDormand, Cynthia Nixon, Janet McTeer, Marsha Norman, Jim Parsons, Joan Plowright, Marian Seldes, Fiona Shaw, Max Stafford-Clark, Tom Stoppard, Meryl Streep, Daniel Sullivan, Jessica Tandy, Paula Vogel, Sigourney Weaver, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson and George C. Wolfe among more than 200 artists in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
About the Finalists
Lisa D'Amour (U.S.)- Airline Highway
Submitted by Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Manhattan Theatre Club
Airline Highway is a Steppenwolf Theater commission and is currently running at Steppenwolf, directed by Joe Mantello. The production will transfer to Manhattan Theater Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theater (Broadway), opening on April 23.
Lisa D’Amour is a playwright and interdisciplinary artist and one half of the OBIE-Award winning performance duo PearlDamour. Her plays have been commissioned and produced by theaters across the country, including The Women’s Project, Playwrights’ Horizons, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, Clubbed Thumb, (all in NYC), Children’s Theater Company (Minneapolis), Steppenwolf Theater Company (Chicago) The Wilma Theater (Philadelphia), Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington D.C.) and the Royal National Theater (London). Lisa’s play Detroit was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn prize. She is the recipient of the 2008 Alpert Award for the Arts in theater, the 2011 Steinberg Playwright Award and is a recipient of the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.
PearlDamour is known for creating interdiscplinary, often site-specific works which range from the intimate to large scale. Currently they are working on a commission from Longwood Gardens to create a large scale performance for their meadow. Recent work includes How to Build a Forest, an 8-hour performance installation created with visual artist Shawn Hall (The Kitchen, New York, 2011, currently touring) and MILTON, a performance created from visits and work in 5 U.S. cities named Milton. In 2008, Lisa wrote and directed a performance for visual artist SWOON’s Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, a flotilla of six boats created from salvaged materials that navigated the Hudson River.
Lisa’s work as a playwright has also been supported by the Jerome and McKnight Foundations, NYSCA, the MacDowell Colony and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. Lisa received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a core alum of the Playwrights’ Center and a recent alumna of New Dramatists. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, Brendan Connelly.
Clare Barron (U.S.)- You Got Older
Submitted by Page 73 Productions
You Got Older received its world premiere in the fall of 2014, directed by Anne Kauffman and produced by Page 73 at HERE Arts Center in New York City.
Clare Barron is a playwright and actor from Wenatchee, Washington. Her plays include You Got Older, which received its world premiere this fall with Page 73, directed by Anne Kauffman; Baby Screams Miracle (Clubbed Thumb Summerworks); Solar Plexus (EST’s Marathon of One-Act Plays); and Dirty Crusty. She is the recipient of the 2014 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow and the Paula Vogel Award at the Vineyard, and a two-time finalist for the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission. She is also a member of Youngblood, an Affiliated Artist with Target Margin, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and is currently pursuing her MFA at Brooklyn College. As an actor, Clare appeared in the world premiere of Heidi Schreck’s The Consultant (Long Wharf) and traveled to Beirut to play Mae in an Arabic-English production of María Irene Fornés’ Mud.
Alice Birch (U.K.)- Revolt. She said. Revolt again.
Submitted by the RSC (U.K.) and the Wilma Theater (U.S.)
Commissioned by the RSC, Revolt. She said. Revolt again. was performed at The Other Place at the RSC in Stratford in June and July 2014 and then played at the Royal Court Theatre for two performances in July 2014 and the Latitude Festival.
Alice Birch is the co-winner of the 2014 George Devine Award for Revolt. She said. Revolt again., winner of the Arts Foundation Award for Playwriting 2014, and was one of the BBC Writersroom 10 for 2014. Writing includes We Want You To Watch (National Theatre), Many Moons (Finalist, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize) Little Light (Orange Tree), Little on the inside (Almeida / Clean Break), So Much Once (24 Hour Celebrity Gala Old Vic), Open Court Soap Opera (Royal Court), Salt (Comedie de Valence) and Flying the Nest (BBC Radio 4). She is currently under commission to Clean Break, Pentabus Theatre, Young Vic, Paines Plough and the Royal Court Theatre; and is screenwriter in one of final selected filmmaking teams for this year’s iFeatures scheme.
Alecky Blythe (U.K.)- Little Revolution
Submitted by the Almeida Theatre
Little Revolution was produced by the Almeida Theatre in the Fall of 2014.
Alecky Blythe is a playwright and actor. She won a Time Out Award for her first play, Come Out Eli, and was selected as one of Screen International's Stars of Tomorrow in 2007. Alecky's London Road won Best Musical at the Critics' Circle Awards and was revived in 2012 at the National Theatre in the Olivier after its sellout in the Cottesloe in 2011. She was also involved in Headlong Theatre's production of Decade, she co-wrote Friday Night Sex with Michael Wynne for the Royal Court, Where Have I Been All My Life? for the New Vic Stoke and most recently Little Revolution for the Almeida.
In 2003, Alecky set up Recorded Delivery (Verbatim Theatre Company). The term “recorded delivery” has now become synonymous with the verbatim technique she employs. For Recorded Delivery she wrote and performed in All the Right People Come Here at the New Wimbledon Studio and Cruising at the Bush.
Her work includes Strawberry Fields for Pentabus , I Only Came Here for Six Months commissioned by the British Council in Brussels, The Girlfriend Experience at the Royal Court and the Drum which transferred to the Young Vic. In 2010 she won a Fringe First Award for Do We look Like Refugees?! at the Assembly Rooms, the show was first performed at the Rustaveli Theatre in Georgia in collaboration with the National Theatre Studio and the British Council.
For television she wrote A Man in a Box, a drama documentary for Channel 4, and wrote and co-directed The Riots ; In their Words, a drama documentary for BBC Two. For film she has adapted London Road into a screenplay, produced by BBC Films and Cuba Pictures, which will be released in June 2014. She is currently writing a short film for BBC Four for the Dialogues strand that will be re-launching drama on the channel this summer. She studied theatre at the University of Warwick and trained at Mountview Academy.
Clara Brennan (U.K.)- Spine
Submitted by Soho Theatre
The one-woman play Spine premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe (winner Fringe First, Herald Angel) and then ran at Soho Theatre in October, 2014.
Clara Brennan’s forthcoming play Boa opens at the Trafalgar Studios on February 5th, starring Dame Harriet Walter. She won the OffWestEnd Adopt a Playwright Award 2012 and the Channel 4 Playwright's Award for her forthcoming play 'The Vendor'. She is Channel 4 playwright in residence at the Soho Theatre for 2014. Recent work includes 'Kid a Kidder' at the Royal Court Theatre Live Lunch series, 'Hi Vis', 'Spine', 'The Wing' and 'Pachamama' for Theatre Uncut, 'Bud Take The Wheel, I Feel A Song Coming On' at Edinburgh Fringe, and 'Rain' as part of 'Lough/Rain' at York Theatre Royal. She has TV and film projects in development. 'Boa' first premiered as a reading at the HighTide Festival 2014.
Katherine Chandler (U.K.)- Parallel Lines
Submitted by Sherman Cymru
Welsh theatre Dirty Protest premiered Parallel Lines in November of 2014.
Katherine Chandler is a Welsh playwright whose plays have been produced by companies such as National Theatre Wales, Bristol Old Vic, Sherman Cymru, Pentabus theatre, Theatr Nan’Og and Dirty Protest.
Katherine was the inaugural Winner of the BBC and National Theatre Wales, Wales Drama Award, with Parallel Lines. Katherine’s play Before it Rains won the Writers Guild Playwright award, Theatre Critics of Wales Awards and was a Finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize. Her play Bird won the 2013 Bruntwood judges prize and is in development with Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre.
Katherine’s adaptation of Terry Jones’ fairy tales The Silly Kings was produced by National Theatre Wales in Cardiff Castle and her new play Hood will be performed by 42 youth groups as part of the National Theatre Connections. BBC iPlayer released Katherine’s first film ‘Tag’ this year and she is currently working with National Theatre Wales, BBC Drama and Clean Break Theatre Company.
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig (U.S.)- The World of Extreme Happiness
Submitted by Marin Theatre Company
The World of Extreme Happiness debuted in a workshop production at the UK’s National Theatre. Its world premiere is a co-production with the Goodman Theatre (Fall, 2014) and the Manhattan Theatre Club (beginning February 3, 2015) directed by Eric Ting.
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's plays have been produced by the Goodman Theatre, the National Theatre, Trafalgar Studios 2 [West End], Crowded Fire, Page 73 Productions, Interact Theatre, Borderlands Theatre and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Awards her plays have received include the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award, an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, the David A. Callichio Emerging American Playwright Award and the Keene Prize for Literature. Her plays have been workshopped at the Goodman Theatre, the Alley Theatre, Yale Rep, Seattle Rep, South Coast Rep, PlayPenn, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Hedgebrook Women's Playwright Festival, the Playwright's Foundation, UC Berkeley and the High Tide Festival. She has received residencies from Yaddo, Macdowell, Ragdale, the Sundance Playwright's Retreat at Ucross and the Santa Fe Art Institute. She is currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club, the Goodman Theatre and the National Theatre. Her play Lidless was a Finalist for the 2010-2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Frances received an MFA in Writing from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, a BA in Sociology from Brown University, and a certificate in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. Her work has been published by Yale University Press, Glimmer Train, Methuen Drama, Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service. Frances was born in Philadelphia, and raised in Northern Virginia, Okinawa, Taipei and Beijing. She was previously a NNPN Playwright-in-Residence at Marin Theatre Company and is currently a Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Manhattan Theatre Club.
Lindsey Ferrentino (U.S.) Ugly Lies the Bone
Submitted by The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and Roundabout Theatre Company
The world premiere of Ugly Lies the Bone will be produced off-Broadway by Roundabout Theater Company (Roundabout Underground) in the Fall of 2015. Ugly Lies the Bone was developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. The play was also chosen for Roundabout Theater Company's Underground Reading Series, Premiere Stages New Play Contest, Florida Studio Theater's New Play Festival, and The Great Plains Theater Conference.The play has an upcoming production at The Bloomington Playwrights Project and was produced at Fordham University in 2014.
Lindsey Ferrentino is a New York based playwright originally from the sunny state of Florida where many of her plays are set. She recently received the 2015 emerging writer's commission from South Coast Repertory. Lindsey was a 2014 Kendeda playwright with The Alliance Theater.
Her work has been developed/performed at Atlantic Theater Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, 3LD Art and Technology Center, Manhattan Repertory Theater, and The Marilyn Monroe Theater in New York. Her work has been seen regionally at The Kennedy Center in DC, The Alliance Theater in Georgia, The Blank Theater in LA, and The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Ferrentino is a recipient of the Edward Albee Playwriting Fellowship and Residency as well as The Blue Ridge Summer Theater Festival’s Playwriting Fellowship. Her short stories have been published in New York Magazine and Aaduna Literary Magazine. She holds a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, an MFA in playwriting from Hunter College, and is currently pursuing a second master's degree in playwriting at The Yale School of Drama.
Zodwa Nyoni (U.K.) Boi Boi is Dead
Submitted by West Yorkshire Playhouse
Tiata Fahodzi, the UK's leading African theatre company, in co-production with West Yorkshire Playhouse and Watford Palace Theatre will premiere Boi Boi is Dead beginning mid-February, 2015.
Zodwa Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born playwright and poet based in Leeds, UK. As winner of the Channel 4 Playwright’s Scheme, she was Writer-in-Residence at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2014. She's previously been: Apprentice Poet-in-Residence at Ilkely Literature Festival (2013), Writer in Residence at Leeds Kirkgate Market (2012), Poet-in-Residence and Writer-in-Residence at I Love West Leeds Festival (2010) and BBC Radio Leeds (2006).
Boi Boi is Dead is Ms. Nyoni's first full-length play. Other theatre credits include: Tangled Roots (2014), Nine Lives (2014), Come To Where I’m From (2013), The Market (2013), Di Daakes’ Part A Di Night (2013), Home Has Died (2012), Why The Drought Returns (2012), The Night Shift (2011) and The Povo Die Till Freedom Comes (2010).
Zodwa has performed her poetry at the Venezuela Embassy in London, British Museum, Beacons Festival, Ilkely Literature Festival, Bridlington Literature Festival, Southbank Centre, Bush Theatre and Nuyorican Poets Café (New York City). Her poetry is featured in Sweet Tongues (Crocus Books), Cleaves 2, issue 2 (UK and European literary journal), Aesthetica Magazine Creative Works Annual 2009, The Warehouse Magazine, Canada, (2009 & 2008), Sable Lit Magazine and The Suitcase Book of Love Poems.
She has been the recipient of the following awards: Award for the Arts 2011 (Leeds Black Awards) and the Young Black and Asian Writers Award (The Big Issue in the North's Short Story Competition 2011).
Heidi Schreck (U.S.) Grand Concourse
Submitted by Playwrights Horizons
Grand Concourse premiered at Playwrights Horizons in October of 2014 and will debut on the The Steppenwolf Theatre mainstage in June 2015..
Heidi Schreck is a playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actor. Heidi's other plays include Creature, produced in New York by New Georges and Page 73 and in a well-received production directed by Leigh Silverman; There Are No More Big Secrets, directed by Kip Fagan, which premiered at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre (New York Magazine and Time Out New York’s Critic’s pick), and The Consultant, which was produced by Long Wharf Theater in 2014. A former Page 73 Playwriting Fellow and Sundance and Soho Rep artist, Heidi is currently working on commissions for South Coast Repertory Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan Foundation, and True Love Productions. As an actor she has also performed extensively at theaters such as Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre (Shakespeare in the Park), Manhattan Theatre Club, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, The Foundry, Clubbed Thumb, The Women’s Project, The Roundabout, Williamstown, Berkeley Rep and Center Theatre Group. Heidi has also worked as staff writer and story editor on Nurse Jackie. Heidi was the 2014 Roe Green Award Winner from the Cleveland Playhouse and is also Playwrights Horizons’ first Clare Tow Foundation playwright-in-residence.
Ruby Rae Spiegel (U.S.) Dry Land
Submitted by Colt Coeur
Ruby Rae Spiegel is from Brooklyn, New York. Her first play, Carrie & Francine, was selected for the Off-Broadway Summer Shorts 5 Festival. Her most recent play, Dry Land, was produced at the HERE Arts Center by downtown theater company, Colt Coeur, and was developed at New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Summer Theater Session as well as the Ojai Playwrights Conference. Ruby is a graduate of Young Playwrights Inc. and is currently finishing her last semester at Yale College.
Tena Štivičić (U.K.) 3 Winters
Submitted by The National Theatre
3 Winters was produced at the National Theatre in London in December 2014.
Tena Štivičić was born in Zagreb, Croatia. She lives in London and writes in English and Croatian. Her plays Can't Escape Sundays (2000), At Deathbed (1998), The Two of Us (2002), Fragile! (2004), Fireflies (2007), Felix (2008), Invisible (2011), Europe (2013) and plays for children Perceval – the Quest for the Grail (2001) and Psssst! (2004) have been produced in a number of European countries and translated and published in some ten languages. They have won numerous awards including the European Authors Award and Innovation Award at Heidelberg Stueckemarkt in Germany 2008 for Fragile!
Europe was co-written with leading European playwrights Malgorzata Sikorska Miszczuk, Lutz Hubner and Steve Waters and produced by the Birmingham REP, ZKM Zagreb, Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz and Dresden Staatstheater.
In 2007, she wrote a one-act play as part of an omnibus of plays entitled Goldoni Terminus, premiered at the Venice Biennale. Her play Seven Days in Zagreb was part of the European Theatre Convention project entitled Orient Express in 2009. A feature film adapted from her play Invisible is currently in pre-production. She holds an MA in Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
For more information about the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, visit Contact:
Leslie Swackhamer
Executive Director, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
susansmithblackburn@gmail.com
www.blackburnprize.org
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