Susan Smith Blackburn Prize announces joint winners for its 48th year

Two winners have been awarded the 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

As the largest and oldest award recognising women+ writers for the English-speaking theatre, across almost 50 years, over 500 plays have been honoured as finalists, with past winners including Alice Birch, Julia Cho, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Paula Vogel and many more. Details about this year’s finalists can be found here.

Ultimately, the Prize was presented to Ro Reddick for Cold War Choir Practice and Hannah Doran for The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights. It is the first time in 25 years that there have been joint winners.

The news was revealed at the Royal Court Theatre tonight, 26 February, in front of an international community of theatre leaders and artists. 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.

Executive director of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Leslie Swackhamer, commented that both plays were debuts, adding: “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.”

Reddick remarked that she began writing Cold War Choir Practice in graduate school in 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.”

She added: “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 realisation you make once and then spend the rest of your life unpacking. This play is part of that unpacking.”

Of The Meat Kings, Doran explained: “I wanted to capture the world of a butcher’s cut room and put it on stage, but the political storyline of the play proved to be quite prescient.” The writer said she began work on it during the first Trump administration, and the Papatango Prize-winning play received its premiere at the Park Theatre last year during the second. She added: “I think it has only become more relevant in that time, as we are all increasingly divided by damaging political rhetoric.”

WhatsOnStage has had the honour of speaking to both winning playwrights – keep an eye out for the interviews soon!