Every day is opening night.

Press Contacts:
Rick Miramontez / Marie Bshara / Morgan Zysman
rick@omdkc.com / marie@omdkc.com / morgan@omdkc.com
212 695 7400

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Contacts:
Leslie Swackhamer
Executive Director
susansmithblackburn@gmail.com

Kate Morley
kate@katemorleypr.com

FOR RELEASE ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26

THE SUSAN SMITH BLACKBURN PRIZE
THE PRESTIGIOUS INTERNATIONAL AWARD
FOR WOMEN+ PLAYWRIGHTS
ANNOUNCES JOINT 2026 WINNERS,
BOTH WITH DEBUT PLAYS

RO REDDICK
FOR HER PLAY
“COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE” 

AND

HANNAH DORAN
FOR HER PLAY
“THE MEAT KINGS! (INC.) OF BROOKLYN HEIGHTS”

To download headshots, please click HERE.

New York/London (February 26, 2026) – Tonight, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize announced joint winners for the 48^th Annual Award. The 2026 award has been given to both U.S. playwright Ro Reddick for her play Cold War Choir Practice and U.K./Ireland playwright Hannah Doran for her play The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights. Awarded annually since 1978, the prestigious international Prize is the largest and oldest award recognizing women+ who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre.

On February 26, an international community of theatre leaders and artists gathered at the Royal Court Theatre (London) to honor and celebrate Doran and Reddick and a cohort of 8 additional Finalists. Doran and Reddick each received a cash prize of $25,000, and a signed print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Each Finalist was awarded $5,000.

“We are excited to see two debut plays win the Prize,” remarked Leslie Swackhamer, executive director of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. “These writers are on the cusp of brilliant careers, and their plays could not be more different – one is a surreal romp of political intrigue, and the other is firmly grounded in realism – and both are dealing with our current moment in theatrically thrilling ways.”

On receiving the 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Reddick remarked, “I began writing Cold War Choir Practice in graduate school in the fall of 2022. Months earlier, Putin had invaded Ukraine, headlines were popping up asking if we were in a new Cold War, and childhood memories of my time in a chorus dedicated to world peace came flooding back. Writing this play became an attempt to capture a very particular kind of coming of age: the moment when you learn the world is not a safe place for you. It’s a realization you make once and then spend the rest of your life unpacking. This play is part of that unpacking.”

Also receiving the 2026 prize, Doran said, “I wanted to capture the world of a butchers’ cut room and put it on stage, but the political storyline of the play proved to be quite prescient. I started writing The Meat Kings during the first Trump administration, and it premiered during the second. I think it has only become more relevant in that time, as we are all increasingly divided by damaging political rhetoric.”

ABOUT THE WINNERS

Cold War Choir Practice by Ro Reddick (U.S.)

“Not since Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove has the threat of political venality and nuclear holocaust been so brilliantly and bizarrely satirized.”

                  – The Boston Globe

Set in a Syracuse roller rink in 1987, Cold War Choir Practice is a darkly witty and genre-bending fugue of Reaganomics, espionage, roller disco, cults… and choir practice.  A young girl and her family are embroiled in intrigue and mystery when her estranged uncle, a prominent Black conservative, brings his mysteriously ill wife home for the holidays.

Praising the script’s special alchemy of style married to substance Judge Benedict Lombe said, “I cannot state enough how much I love this writer’s originality of voice, playfulness of form and bold and unafraid vision. I haven’t had this much fun reading a script in a while. This is theatrical writing that is alive and audacious, and does exactly what it sets out to do.”

Reddick’s debut play Cold War Choir Practice premiered to rave reviews in Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2025, co-produced by Page 73. It was also produced in September 2025 at Trinity Repertory Company (dir. Aileen Wen McGroddy). The play is currently in previews and opens on March 9 at MCC Theatre (New York) in a co-production with Clubbed Thumb, and Page 73, directed by Tony Award nominee Knud Adams (English). Cold War Choir Practice was a New York Times Critic’s Pick in 2025 and is among Vulture’s “can’t wait to see shows” of 2026.

The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights by Hannah Doran (Ireland/U.K.)

★★★★ “A compelling blue-collar American nightmare.”

– The Standard

At Cafarelli & Sons, an iconic New York butcher, T is the new summer hire, but life in a freezing cut room is far from glamorous. No-nonsense boss Paula is fighting to keep her business alive; Apprentices JD and Billy find themselves pitted against each other as her number two David watches on. How far will they go to survive? The Meat Kings! (Inc.) carves into the dark underbelly of America’s anti-immigration policies and the brutal sacrifices people make in the pursuit of prosperity and The American Dream. This debut play was inspired by writer Hannah Doran’s time as a vegetarian working as a butcher in New York City.

Judge Julie Hesmondhalgh rhapsodized, “For me it read like Arthur Miller.  A proper play about NOW, told with fantastic dialogue and characterization. I was deeply affected.”

The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights won the 2024 Papatango New Writing Prize, the biggest annual playwriting award in the UK, and has been nominated for the Critics’ Circle Most Promising Playwright Award 2026.  It received its world premiere production at London’s Park Theatre in Autumn, 2025, in a co-production between Papatango and Park Theatre.

ABOUT THE PRIZE

For nearly fifty years, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has recognized the most visionary women+ writing for the stage—artists whose voices have defined generations of contemporary theatre.  Over 500 plays have been honoured as Finalists of the Prize and many have gone on to receive  other top awards, including Olivier, Lilly, Evening Standard and Tony Awards for Best Play. Eleven Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist playwrights have subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The Prize results in more productions of plays by women+ writers and fosters the interchange of plays between the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries.

Past winners of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize include Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, Annie Baker’s The Flick, Caryl Churchill’s Fen, Marsha Norman’s ‘night,Mother, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive,  Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, Chloe Moss’s This Wide Night, Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Behzti (Dishonour), Julia Cho’s The Language Archive, Jennifer Haley’s The Nether, Charlotte Jones’ Humble Boy, Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare, and Moira Buffini’s Silence. The Winner of the 2024 Prize, 1536 by Ava Pickett, played to rave reviews and sold-out houses at the Almeida, and made make its West End premiere last May.

Finalists for the 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, each of whom received $5,000 were:
Barbara Bergin (Ireland) Dublin Gothic
Amy Jephta (South Africa) A Good House
Frances Poet (UK) Small Acts of Love
Jasmine Sharma (US) Pigeonhole
Jen Silverman (US) Regressions
DeLanna Studi (Cherokee Nation) “I” is for Invisible
Else Went (US) Initiative
Bess Wohl (US) Liberation

Judges for the 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize were: Julie Hesmondhalgh (U.K). – Award Winning Television and Theatre Actress; Mara Isaacs (U.S). – Tony Award-Winning Broadway Producer; Mimi Lien (U.S.) .– Tony Award-Winning Set Designer; Benedict Lombe (U.K.) – Award-Winning Playwright; Audra McDonald (U.S). – Emmy, Grammy, and six-time Tony Award Winning Singer and Actor; and Ian Rickson (U.K.) – Celebrated Theatre Director and former Artistic Director of the Royal Court.

# # # #

www.blackburnprize.org
www.instagram.com/blackburn_prize

www.omdkc.com
www.instagram.com/omdkc
www.facebook.com/omdkc
bsky.app/profile/omdkc.bsky.social