The finalists for this year's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize have been revealed, honoring women+ playwrights working in English-speaking theatre.
Tony winner Sarah Paulson announced the prestigious list in a video that can be seen on Playbill's Instagram. Watch below:
The finalists are Chris Bush for Otherland, Carys Coburn for BÁN, Keiko Green for You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World, Haruna Lee for 49 Days, Isobel McArthur for The Fair Maid of the West, Suzie Miller for Inter Alia, a.k. payne for Furlough’s Paradise, Else Went for An Oxford Man, and Anna Ziegler for The Janeiad.
The winner will be announced at a celebration hosted at Playwrights Horizons March 10. The winner will receive a $25,000 award along with a signed and numbered print from artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the honor. Judges may choose to award a $10,000 special commendation, and finalists will each receive $5,000.
“We are thrilled to present the Prize at Playwrights Horizons, a theatre with a deep history and commitment to developing and producing brilliant new plays by women and non-binary writers,” says Prize Executive Director Leslie Swackhamer in a statement. "2023 winner Sarah Mantell’s In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot premiered there last fall. This year’s exciting cohort of playwrights hails from all over the English-speaking world, and represents a vigorous diversity of voices, genre, and subject matter. We can’t wait to celebrate and honor their work."
This year's judges panel comprises Linda Cho, Jennifer Ehle, Nancy Medina, Mark Ravenhill, George Strus, and Indira Varma.
Now in its 47th year, the Blackburn Prize is the largest and oldest international playwriting award. More than 500 plays have been honored as finalists since the honor's inception in 1978, with past winners including Annie Baker, Alice Birch, Benedict Lombe, Julia Cho, Caryl Churchill, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Katori Hall, Lucy Kirkwood, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, Dael Orlandersmith, Lucy Prebble, Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Timberlake Wertenbaker, and Cheryl West.
For more on this year's finalists and their works, visit BlackburnPrize.org.