Chloe Moss Awarded 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

The 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has been awarded to British playwright and Liverpool native, Chloë Moss for her critically acclaimed play This Wide Night.

At a private reception in London on February 25, the transatlantic theatre community gathered to honor the playwright and a distinguished list of finalists. The prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, now entering its fourth decade is given annually to recognize women from around the world who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre. Star of stage and screen and Blackburn Prize Judge, Sigourney Weaver, presented Moss with an award of $20,000 and a signed and numbered print by artist Willem De Kooning. Ms. Weaver also presented a Special Commendation award of $5,000 to British playwright Lucinda Coxon for Happy Now?.

In the words of Ms. Moss, This Wide Night "explores the importance and uniqueness of relationships formed in prison: how they can, or perhaps cannot, exist in another context; and also resettlement - when ‘freedom' can actually feel like a very bleak and frightening prospect."
 Crackling with wit and sparkling with hope, This Wide Night is a tender portrayal of two women trying to start again. The play was commissioned and produced by Clean Break and premiered at The Soho Theatre, London, followed by a regional tour to Live Theatre Newcastle, and Drum Theatre, Plymouth, as well as a tour to 4 women's prisons.

Happy Now? is a wise, witty, and observant play about a woman's struggle to have

it all - family, personal freedom, fidelity and career. Happy Now? dares to ask just that, in this painfully truthful, darkly comic take on contemporary life and how to survive it. The play enjoyed a sold-out run in its acclaimed premiere at the Royal National Theatre, and received its U.S. premiere at Yale Repertory Theater. It was accorded the Writer's Guild of Great Britain 2008 Best Play Award. The play will receive its NY premiere at Primary Stages in January 2010.

The distinguished list of 2009 finalists for The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize also includes Anupama Chandrasekhar - Free Outgoing (India), Ann Marie Healy - What Once We Felt (U.S.), Michele Lowe - Inana (U.S.), Elizabeth Meriwether - Oliver! (U.S.), Lynn Nottage - Ruined (U.S.), Kaite O'Reilly - The Almond and the Seahorse (Wales), Amy Rosenthal - On The Rocks (England), and Esther Wilson - Ten Tiny Toes (England). Sigourney Weaver presented each of the finalists with an award of $1,000.

In addition to Sigourney Weaver, the international panel of judges for the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize awards includes Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Edward Albee (A Delicate Balance, Seascape, Three Tall Women); noted British playwright and director, Peter Gill; lauded British actress Jenny Jules (currently in rehearsal at The National Theatre for Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman); McCarter Theatre artistic director and award-winning playwright, Emily Mann; and Genista McIntosh, Executive Director of the Royal National Theatre for many years and currently a Trustee of the Theatres Trust.

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize reflects the values and interests of Susan Smith Blackburn, noted American actress and writer who lived in London during the last 15 years of her life. She died in 1977 at the age of 42. Over 300 plays have been chosen as finalists since the prize was instituted in 1977. Over 60 of them are frequently produced in the United States today. Six Blackburn finalist plays have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The authors of those plays, Margaret Edson, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, Suzan-Lori Parks, Paula Vogel and Wendy Wasserstein are the only women to have done so since the Blackburn Prize was first established.

BIOGRAPHIES

WINNER
Chloë Moss's plays include A Day in Dull Armour (winner of the Young Writers' Festival 2004, Royal Court), How Love is Spelt (Special Commendation from the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004), Christmas is Miles Away (Manchester Royal Exchange and Bush Theatre), The Way Home (Liverpool Everyman) and Catch (Royal Court, written collaboratively with April De Angelis, Laura Wade, Stella Feehily and Tanika Gupta). She has been a Writer-in-Residence at the Bush and with Paines Plough and also writes for television. She was a Writer on Attachment at The National Theatre Studio in 2006. She is currently under commission to Paines Plough, the Royal Court and Liverpool Everyman.

SPECIAL COMMENDATION
Lucinda Coxon has worked at the Bush Theatre, Soho Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre, and The National Theatre in London. Her work has also been produced at Yale Repertory, South Coast Repertory, the Magic Theatre, and Ohio Theatre Space in the US. Her plays include Waiting at the Water's Edge, Wishbones, Three Graces, The Ice Palace, Nostalgia, Vesuvius, I Am Angela Brazil by Angela Brazil, and The Shoemaker's Incredible Wife. Lucinda's short play The Eternal Not, a response the Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, will be staged at The National Theatre in June 2009. Ms. Coxon also has extensive screenwriting credits.
Past recipients of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize include Judith Thompson's Palace of the End, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's Behzti (Dishonour), Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House, Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman, Susan Miller's A Map of Doubt and Rescue, Gina Gionfriddo's U.S. Drag, Bridget Carpenter's Fall, Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy, Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare, Jessica Goldberg's Refuge, Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, Moira Buffini's Silence and Caryl Churchill's Serious Money.

Former judges of The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize over the past thirty years are a Who's Who of the English-speaking theatre and include Eileen Atkins, Blair Brown, Zoe Caldwell, Jill Clayburgh, Glenn Close, Harold Clurman, Colleen Dewhurst, John Guare, A.R. Gurney, Tony Kushner, John Lahr, Marsha Norman, Joan Plowright, Marian Seldes, Fiona Shaw, Tom Stoppard, Meryl Streep, Jessica Tandy, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson and JoAnne Woodward among nearly 200 artists in the United States, England and Ireland.

Each year artistic directors and prominent professionals in the theatre throughout the English-speaking world are asked to submit plays. In addition to the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland, new plays have been submitted from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. Plays are eligible whether or not they have been produced, but any premiere production must have occurred within the preceding year. Each script receives multiple readings by members of an international reading committee that then selects ten finalists. All six judges read each finalist's play.
Over 100 plays were submitted for consideration this year. The submitting theatres of the finalists are: Clean Break, London; Denver Center Theatre Company; the Liverpool Everyman; Hampstead Theatre, London; Juilliard (Playwriting); Manhattan Theatre Club; Playwrights Horizons; The Royal Court Theatre; Sherman Cymru, Cardiff; Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago; and Yale Repertory Theatre.

www.blackburnprize.org