The winner of this year’s 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has been announced, with UK playwright Ava Pickett winning the Prize for her play 1536.
Ava was awarded the Prize at a ceremony yesterday, 11 March 2024, at the Royal Court Theatre in London.
The winner receives a cash award of $25,000, and a signed limited-edition print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Other winners included US Playwright Justice Hehir, who won a Special Commendation Award of $10,000.
The 8 additional finalists each received an award of $5,000. The finalists were: Roxy Cook (UK-Russia) for A Woman Walks Into a Bank; April De Angelis (UK) for The Divine Mrs S; Rhianna Ilube (UK) for Samuel Takes a Break…In Male Dungeon No.5 After a Long But Generally Successful Day of Tours; Jasmine Naziha Jones (UK) for Baghdaddy; Alex Lin (US) for Chinese Republicans; Lenelle Moïse (US) for K-I-S-S-I-N-G; Hannah Moscovitch (CAN) for Red Like Fruit; and a.k. payne (US) for Love I Awethu Further.
The Divine Mrs S by April De Angelis about famous 19th century actor Sarah Siddons, starts a run at Hampstead Theatre from 22 March 2024; and Rhianna Ilube’s new play Samuel Takes a Break… In Male Dungeon No.5 After a Long But Generally Successful Day of Tours, set in Ghana in 2019, is currently playing at fringe venue the Yard Theatre in London until 23 March 2024.
Awarded annually since 1978, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is the largest and oldest international award recognising women+ who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre.
Pickett’s play 1536 is set in Tudor Essex, and follows three best friends as they wrestle with marriage offers, gossip, and bad hair. When the news from London of the Queen’s arrest at the hands of her husband reaches them, the dynamics of their friendship begin to splinter as they struggle with what it means to be a woman in a society that kills women, even those high-born. Picket calls it a “very funny and very angry play, which is also a love letter to the violence and primal nature of female friendship.”
The Judges for the 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize praised Pickett’s play for its creation of a world and characters, which “speak across the centuries” in a play with “sparkling dialogue and thrilling, charismatic writing underpinned by great craft and restraint.” They applauded the play’s portrayal of a “rising tide of puritanical misogyny”, and how it affects the characters and their relationships in ways both “brilliant and chilling.”
A writer and performer, Ava Pickett graduated from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2018 and was also a member of Soho Theatre Writers Lab of that year. Ava’s first commission was to write Roots for Radio 4 which aired in 2020 with a cast led by Vicky McClure and was Comedy of the Week. In 2020, Ava was a resident Playwright at The Mercury Theatre in Essex. Ava was a staff writer on season 3 of The Great for Hulu/Channel 4. Ava wrote for hire on two Danny Brocklehurst led dramas: Brassic, and Ten Pound Poms. Ava is currently adapting the 90s film Pret-A-Porter for Miramax and Paramount Plus; S.T.A.G.S for Annapurna and Urban Myth; Kirsty Capes’ novel Careless for Neal Street; and John Wyndham’s The Trouble with Lichen for Route 24. Ava was a member of the 2021-22 cohort of the Almeida Genesis Writers Programme.
Judges for the 46th Susan Smith Blackburn Prize were poet, playwright and curator Inua Ellams (UK); playwright Sarah Mantell (US), who won the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize; actors April Matthis (US) and Clare Perkins (UK); and directors Eric Ting (US) and Lyndsey Turner (UK).
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