Ro Reddick, Hannah Doran Named Joint Winners of 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

This year's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is going to not one, but two women+ playwrights: Ro Reddick, for Cold War Choir Practice; and Hannah Doran, for The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights. Each will receive a cash prize of $25,000, and a signed print from artist Willem de Kooning.

The Prize also named eight finalists for this year's honor, who each receive a $5,000 prize. Finalists were Barbara Bergin for Dublin Gothic, Amy Jephta for A Good House, Frances Poet for Small Acts of Love, Jasmine Sharma for Pigeonhole, Jen Silverman for Regressions, DeLanna Studi for "I" is for Invisible, Else Went for Initiative, and Bess Wohl for Liberation.

Judges were Julie Hesmondhaigh, Mara Isaacs, Mimi Lien, Benedict Lombe, Audra McDonald, and Ian Rickson.

Cold War Choir Practice wins the honor amidst an Off-Broadway return for the work at MCC Theater, after making its world premiere last summer via Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks. The Syracuse, New York-set work centers on a young girl whose estranged uncle, a prominent Black conservative, brings his mysteriously ill wife home for the holidays. The encore run, a co-production with Clubbed Thumb and Page 73, is currently in previews; it officially opens March 10, and performs through March 29.

"I began writing Cold War Choir Practice in graduate school in the fall of 2022. Months earlier, Putin had invaded Ukraine, headlines were popping up asking if we were in a new Cold War, and childhood memories of my time in a chorus dedicated to world peace came flooding back," says Reddick in a statement. "Writing this play became an attempt to capture a very particular kind of coming of age: the moment when you learn the world is not a safe place for you. It’s a realization you make once and then spend the rest of your life unpacking. This play is part of that unpacking."

Doran's The Meat Kings! made its own world premiere at London's Park Theatre last year, in a co-production with Papatango. The work was inspired by Doran, who is vegetarian, and her time working as a butcher in NYC, ultimately exploring the sacrifices people are willing to meet in their quest for the American Dream, in the face of the country's anti-immigration policies.

"I wanted to capture the world of a butchers’ cut room and put it on stage, but the political storyline of the play proved to be quite prescient. I started writing The Meat Kings during the first Trump administration, and it premiered during the second," says Doran. "I think it has only become more relevant in that time, as we are all increasingly divided by damaging political rhetoric."

"We are excited to see two debut plays win the Prize," says Blackburn Prize Executive Director Leslie Swackhamer. "These writers are on the cusp of brilliant careers, and their plays could not be more different—one is a surreal romp of political intrigue, and the other is firmly grounded in realism—and both are dealing with our current moment in theatrically thrilling ways."

Visit BlackburnPrize.org for more.