Playwrights’ ‘thrilling’ debuts share the Susan Smith Blackburn prize

The Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights has been awarded to joint winners, both for their debut plays.

Hannah Doran’s The Meat Kings! (Inc) of Brooklyn Heights and Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice beat the other eight finalists to the 48th annual award. Doran and Reddick each receive a cash prize of $25,000 (£18,500) and a signed print by the artist Willem de Kooning.

‘Dealing with our current moment’ … Ro Reddick (left) and Hannah Doran.

Doran’s play was staged at the Park theatre in London in 2025 and submitted to the award by the UK theatre company Papatango. It won Papatango’s own new writing prize in 2024. The play is set in a New York butcher’s shop and explores immigration, addiction, life after prison and financial precarity. One of the judges, the actor Julie Hesmondhalgh, said: “For me it read like Arthur Miller. A proper play about now, told with fantastic dialogue and characterisation. I was deeply affected.”

Cold War Choir Practice, submitted by the US theatre company Clubbed Thumb, is a coming-of-age story set in a roller rink in 1987 and draws on Reddick’s memories of being in a children’s chorus and singing songs of peace. It is currently being staged at MCC theater in New York. Judge Benedict Lombe (who won the prize for her own debut, Lava, in 2022), praised the play’s “originality of voice, playfulness of form and bold and unafraid vision … This is theatrical writing that is alive and audacious, and does exactly what it sets out to do.”

Leslie Swackhamer, executive director of the prize, said: “These writers are on the cusp of brilliant careers, and their plays could not be more different [but] both are dealing with our current moment in theatrically thrilling ways.”

Past winners of the prize include Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, Annie Baker’s The Flick and Ava Pickett’s 1536, which was staged at the Almeida theatre in London in 2025, transfers to the West End in May and is being turned into a BBC drama series.

The other judges were producer Mara Isaacs, designer Mimi Lien, actor Audra McDonald and director Ian Rickson.