NEW YORK CITY: The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has introduced 10 finalists for its prestigious playwriting award, the oldest and largest worldwide prize awarded to girls+ playwrights. Chosen from a gaggle of over 190 performs nominated from world wide, the 2023 finalists are Anupama Chandrasekhar (India) for The Father and the Assassin, Maryam Hamidi (U.Okay.) for Moonset, Karen Hartman (U.S.) for New Golden Age, Katie Holly (Ireland) for Her Hand on the Trellis, Kimber Lee (U.S.) for saturday, Sarah Mantell (U.S.) for In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, a.okay. payne (U.S.) for Amani, Francisca Da Silveira (U.S.) Pay No Worship, Zadie Smith (U.Okay.) for The Wife of Willesden, and Ruby Thomas (U.Okay.) for Linck & Mülhahn.
The submitting theatres of this 12 months’s finalists are 59E59 (NYC), Hampstead Theatre (London), Kiln Theatre (London), Ma-Yi Theater Company (NYC), Mermaid Arts Center (Co. Wicklow, Ireland), National Black Theatre (NYC), Playwrights Horizons (NYC), The Citizens Theatre (Glasgow), and The Public Theater (NYC).
The winner, who can be named on the award presentation and forty fifth anniversary celebration on March 27 at Playwrights Horizons in New York City, will obtain a money prize of $25,000 in addition to a restricted version signed print by famend artist Willem de Kooning, created particularly for the Prize. Each of the extra finalists will obtain awards of $5,000.
Based in Chennai, India, Anupama Chandrasekhar was the primary worldwide playwright-in-residence on the National Theatre, London, and a Charles Wallace India Trust Writing Fellow on the University of Chichester. Her performs have been translated into a number of languages and staged at main venues in India, Europe, and North America. The Father and the Assassin opened on the National Theatre’s Olivier Stage in London and was nominated for greatest play and greatest actor on the current London Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
Maryam Hamidi is a author for stage, display and radio, following an extended profession as an actor. Born in Iran and raised in England, she has lived in Scotland for over 20 years. Maryam acquired the Playwright’s Studio Scotland New Playwright’s Award to develop Moonset, presently premiering in a manufacturing by the Citizens Theatre introduced on the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. Maryam likes to collide genres to un-crack the enjoyment, ache and messiness of immigrant expertise, matrilineal ties and energy imbalances.
Karen Hartman’s work launched VOLT at 59e59 Theaters in 2022, in an unprecedented competition of three simultaneous Off-Broadway premieres by a single creator: New Golden Age (Primary Stages); The Lucky Star (The Directors Company); and Goldie, Max & Milk (MBL Productions). Also in 2022, the musical Rattlesnake Kate, e-book by Hartman, rating by Neyla Pekarek, gained eight Henry Awards together with Best New Play or Musical.
Katie Holly’s first three performs, Marion (2016), Sharon (2017), and Crowman (2018), premiered at Cork Midsummer Festival and toured regionally and nationally. Sharon was recorded and broadcast as a radio play on Ireland’s nationwide broadcaster RTE Radio 1 and gained a New York Festival Silver Award for ‘Best Digital Drama’ in 2019. She was commissioned by Cork County Council to put in writing and produce Crossword (Bealtaine Festival 2019) and Pageant (Cork Culture Night 2020).
Kimber Lee’s performs embody the water palace (2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Special Commendation), to the yellow home (La Jolla Playhouse), untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play (2019 Bruntwood Prize International Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist, upcoming World Premiere at Royal Exchange Theatre and Young Vic, UK), saturday (Colorado New Play Summit), tokyo fish story (South Coast Rep, TheatreWorks/SV, Old Globe), brownsville music (b-side for tray)(Humana Festival, LCT3, Long Wharf Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Seattle Rep, Moxie Theatre, Shotgun Players), and completely different phrases for a similar factor directed by Neel Keller (Center Theatre Group).
Sarah Mantell’s performs embody Everything That Never Happened, The Good Guys, Tiny, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, and Fight Call. They have been produced and developed on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Boston Court Pasadena, Playwrights Horizons, The Playwrights Realm, Artists Repertory Theatre, Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, The Yale Cabaret, and Seattle Repertory Theatre. Sarah is beneath fee with Playwrights Horizons and Geva Theatre Center and has been awarded residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Wildacres, Hedgebrook, Jentel, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, in addition to a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, Toulmin grant, Edgerton Foundation grant, and first runner-up for the Leah Ryan FEWW award.
A.okay. payne is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Amani’s premiere is presently operating via March 5 in a co-production by the National Black Theatre and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Payne’s work has been finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award, winner of the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award, and 3x semi-finalist for the O’Neill National Playwriting Conference.
Francisca Da Silveira is a Cape Verdean American playwright and Boston native whose performs have been developed with Theatre 503 (London), the Traverse Theatre, Company One Theatre (Boston), The Fire This Time Festival (New York), the Playwrights Realm (New York), the Public Theater, the New Group, Colt Coeur, and La Jolla Playhouse. Not-For-Profit (Or The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Play) was featured within the Playwrights’ Realm’s INK’D Festival in 2021 and in La Jolla Playhouse’s DNA New Works Series in 2021. Pay No Worship will obtain a world premiere manufacturing at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company in spring 2023.
Zadie Smith is a novelist and essayist born in North London to an English father and a Jamaican mom. Her books embody White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time. She has additionally printed three collections of essays—Changing My Mind, Feel Free, and Intimations—and a group of brief tales, Grand Union. Her first play The Wife of Willesden, which debuted at London’s Kiln Theatre in 2021, is a reimagining of the Wife of Bath’s Tale from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The manufacturing will play within the U.S. at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., then at Brooklyn Academy of Music, starting in March.
Ruby Thomas is an actor and author from London. Her performs Either (2019) and The Animal Kingdom (2022) have been produced by Hampstead Theatre Downstairs and her brief play Romy & Me was a part of the Living Newspaper on the Royal Court (2020). She was chosen for the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme (2020), acquired a Jerwood Commission from the Royal Court (2021) and was nominated for the George Devine Award (2022) for Linck & Mülhahn. The premiere manufacturing of Linck & Mülhahn is presently operating via March 4 at Hampstead Theatre.
Founded in 1978, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is awarded yearly to have a good time girls+ who’ve written excellent works for the English-speaking theatre. Women+ consists of girls, transgender, and non-binary playwrights. An worldwide panel of six judges chooses the successful play from among the many finalists.
The judges for the forty fifth Susan Smith Blackburn Prize are author Julia Cho (U.S.) (earlier winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for The Language Archive), stage director Rebecca Frecknall (U.Okay.), choreographer/director Raja Feather Kelly (U.S.), theatrical producer and president of the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) Eleanor Lloyd (U.Okay.),celebrated actor/director/author Lucian Msamati (U.Okay.), and stage and display actor Amy Ryan (U.S.).
Related