Anne Washburn Named Winner of 2026 Hermitage Major Theater Award

Playwright Anne Washburn has been named the winner of the 2026 Hermitage Major Theater Award, which includes a $35,000 commission to create an original work. The honor also includes a residency at the Hermitage and a workshop of the new work, hoped for fall 2027.

Washburn's plays include Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play; 10 Out of 12; Antila Pneumatica; The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire; A Devil at Noon; Apparition; The Communist Dracula Pageant; I Have Loved Strangers; Little Bunny Foo Foo, The Internationalist; Shipwreck; and The Small, along with translation-adaptations of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis and Orestes.

The playwright will use the Hermitage commission to create an adaptation of Aeschylus' The Oresteia, to be inspired by the role of democracy in modern social media. Washburn will first work on Adamemnon and The Libation Bearers before taking on The Eumenides, the trilogy's final work. She plans to transform the original works' Greek chorus into moments of audience sing-along.

“The Oresteia was an act of art which was simultaneously an act of deep cultural and social significance. We don't come together like the ancient Greeks did—one city gathered into one stadium to watch the same stories at the same moment—but that instinct still resounds in us, and the fabric of our culture and our society is woven throughout with the art we remember and the art we no longer remember; it's a toss-up which is the more powerful driver of individuals and of nations," says Washburn of the work.

“Amidst four extraordinary and deserving finalists, Anne Washburn confirmed herself to be one of America’s most compelling playwrights as she impressed us all with her inventive and ambitious proposal,” adds Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg. “We are honored to support Anne as she creates this epic new play, and we can’t wait to see her brilliant work come to fruition. I must thank our brilliant and dedicated Award Committee—Evan Cabinet, Snehal Desai, and Jill Rafson—for their passion, intelligence, and care throughout this process. I also want to congratulate Adam Gwon, Talene Monahon, and Aya Ogawa, each of whom are innovative and exceptional artists with thrilling, original ideas for new theatrical works.”

“Anne Washburn is one of our most brilliant and fascinating playwrights, and the Hermitage one of the most important and vital arts organizations in America,” says Cabnet, part of the 2025-2026 Award Committee (along with Snehal Desai and Jill Rafson). “To know she'll have the support of Andy Sandberg and everyone at the Hermitage as she embarks on such an ambitious project makes me excited for the future; I cannot wait to see what she creates.”

“There are not a lot of Anne Washburns out there,” adds Rafson. “Her voice is one of a kind, and the preoccupations of her subjects are so unique. No one else would even think about writing this play in this way, or about this combination of things with this source material—and that’s very exciting.”

A leading national arts incubator, the Hermitage is the only major arts organization in Florida’s Gulf Coast exclusively committed to supporting the development and creation of new work across all artistic disciplines.

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