The Susan Smith Blackburn prize for feminine, transgender and non-binary playwrights has been awarded to the US author ak payne for his or her poignant and humorous two-hander Furlough’s Paradise.
The play has been described by payne as a “lyrical journey about grief, house and survival”. It follows two cousins, one in every of whom is on a three-day launch from jail, because the pair attend a funeral of their childhood city.
“I’m so grateful to obtain this award and be part of a listing of a few of my favorite writers whose performs have shaken how I perceive the world,” mentioned payne, namechecking previous winners Katori Corridor, Julia Cho, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, Benedict Lombe and Paula Vogel. These playwrights “have made it doable – via their phrases transcending area and time and/or their caring and considerable mentorship – for me to put in writing,” payne added.
The award contains $25,000 (£19,000) and a signed print by artist Willem de Kooning. Furlough’s Paradise was nominated for the prize by the Alliance theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, the place the play had its premiere in 2024.
The Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, greatest identified for the play and movie variations of Moonlight, mentioned Furlough’s Paradise charts “what it means to attempt to discover a utopia in a world that has a legal justice system that’s removed from excellent”. McCraney taught payne on the David Geffen faculty of drama at Yale Universityin Connecticut and mentioned they’re “one of the crucial highly effective writers I’ve encountered in my time as a professor”. Subsequent month, the play can be staged on the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, the place McCraney is inventive director.
The Susan Smith Blackburn prize has additionally given particular commendations to 49 Days by Haruna Lee and An Oxford Man by Else Went. The opposite finalists this yr, chosen from greater than 200 submissions, included Chris Bush’s play Otherland, which is operating on the Almeida theatre in London. Final yr’s winner, the Tudor drama 1536 by Ava Pickett, opens on the Almeida in Could.
The judges for the prize have been costume designer Linda Cho; actors Indira Varma and Jennifer Ehle; Nancy Medina, inventive director of the Bristol Outdated Vic; playwright Mark Ravenhill; and George Strus, who based the brand new work improvement and neighborhood constructing hub Breaking the Binary theatre in New York.
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