Ava Pickett.
NEW YORK CITY and LONDON: U.Okay. playwright Ava Pickett has been awarded the 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play 1536. Awarded yearly since 1978, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is the most important and oldest worldwide award recognizing ladies+ who’ve written works of excellent high quality for the English-speaking theatre. Every year the prize invitations creative administrators and professionals to submit performs for consideration. 1536 was nominated by London’s Almeida Theatre, which commissioned the play as a part of the Genesis Almeida New Playwrights/Massive Performs Writers Programme.
Set in Tudor Essex, 1536 follows three finest mates as they wrestle with marriage affords, gossip, and unhealthy hair. When the information from London of the Queen’s arrest by the hands of her husband reaches them, the dynamics of their friendship start to splinter as they wrestle with what it means to be a lady in a society that kills ladies, even these high-born.
This 12 months’s winner and finalists have been honored in a ceremony on March 11 on the Royal Court docket Theatre in London. Pickett obtained a money award of $25,000 and a signed limited-edition print by artist Willem de Kooning, created particularly for the prize. U.S. playwright Justice Hehir received a Particular Commendation Award of $10,000 for her play The Dowagers.
Eight further finalists, who every obtained an award of $5,000, included Roxy Cook dinner (U.Okay.-Russia), A Lady Walks Right into a Financial institution; April De Angelis (UK), The Divine Mrs S; Rhianna Ilube (U.Okay.), Samuel Takes a Break…,In Male Dungeon No. 5 After a Lengthy However Typically Profitable Day of Excursions; Jasmine Naziha Jones (U.Okay.), Baghdaddy; Alex Lin (U.S.), Chinese language Republicans; Lenelle Moïse (U.S.), Okay-I-S-S-I-N-G; Hannah Moscovitch (CAN), Pink Like Fruit; and a.okay. payne (U.S.), Love I Awethu Additional.
The submitting theatres of the 2024 finalists are 2b theatre firm (Halifax), Almeida Theatre (London), Ensemble Studio Theatre (NYC), the Eugene O’Neill Theater Middle (Waterford, Conn.), Hampstead Theatre (London), Huntington Theatre (Boston), Royal Court docket Theatre (London), The Yard Theatre (London), Theatre 503 (London), and Yale Repertory Theatre (New Haven). The finalists have been chosen from greater than 200 performs submitted for consideration.
A author and performer, Ava Pickett graduated from The Royal Central College of Speech and Drama in 2018 and was additionally a member of Soho Theatre Writers Lab that 12 months. Pickett’s first fee was to write down Roots for Radio 4 which aired in 2020 with a forged led by Vicky McClure and was featured on Comedy of the Week. In 2020, she was a resident playwright on the Mercury Theatre in Essex. Pickett was a employees author on season 3 of The Nice for Hulu/Channel 4 and wrote for rent on two Danny Brocklehurst led dramas: Brassic and Ten Pound Poms. She is presently adapting the 90s movie Pret-A-Porter for Miramax and Paramount Plus; S.T.A.G.S for Annapurna and City Fantasy; Kirsty Capes’ novel Careless for Neal Avenue; and John Wyndham’s The Bother with Lichen for Route 24. Pickett was a member of the 2021-22 cohort of the Almeida Genesis Writers Programme.
This 12 months’s Blackburn prize judges included poet, playwright, and curator Inua Ellams (U.Okay.), playwright Sarah Mantell (U.S., Winner of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), actors April Matthis (U.S.) and Clare Perkins (U.Okay.), and administrators Eric Ting (U.S.) and Lyndsey Turner (U.Okay.).
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