The 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Reveals Joint Winners

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize revealed joint winners for the 48th 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. 

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.”