‘Exciting’ playwrights’ debuts share Susan Smith Blackburn Prize | stage

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Female, Trans and Non-Binary Playwrights was awarded to joint winners, for their debut plays.

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

Duran’s play was performed at the Park Theater in London in 2025 and was presented for the award by the British theater company Papatango. It won the Papatango New Writing Prize in 2024. The play is set in a New York butcher shop and explores immigration, addiction, life after prison, and financial precarity. One of the judges, actress Julie Hesmondhalgh, said: “For me, the story was like Arthur Miller. It’s a proper play set now, told with great dialogue and characterization. I was deeply moved.”

Cold War Choir Practice, presented by American theater company Clubbed Thumb, is a coming-of-age story set at an ice rink in 1987 and based on Riddick’s memories of being in a children’s choir and singing peace songs. It is currently playing at the MCC Theater in New York. Judge Benedict Lumby (who won the award for her debut, Lava, in 2022), praised the play’s “authenticity of voice, playfulness of form and bold, audacious vision… This is lively, bold playwriting, and it does exactly what it sets out to do.”

“These writers are on the cusp of remarkable careers, and their plays could not be more different,” said Leslie Swackhamer, executive director of the award. [but] Both deal with our current moment in exciting theatrical ways.

Previous winners of the award include Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat,” Annie Baker’s “The Flick” and Ava Beckett’s “1536,” which opened at London’s Almeida Theater in 2025 and is scheduled to transfer to the West End in May and be made into a BBC drama series.

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