Latest news with #SusanSmithBlackburn
The Guardian
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I don't buy it' … Ava Pickett on her play about Anne Boleyn's treason and incest
Like many British schoolchildren, Ava Pickett chanted the 'Divorced, beheaded, died' rhyme about Henry VIII's six wives – and it has stayed in her head ever since. So much so that her play 1536 pivots around the last days of the second wife, Anne Boleyn. Pickett's history lessons covered Boleyn's magnificent rise – which sparked a passion so great the king bent constitutional law to marry her – as well as the torrid details of her downfall and beheading. Pickett believed the 'facts' (that Boleyn committed treason, that she slept with her brother) until she didn't. 'The older I got,' says the 31-year-old, 'the more I thought, 'I don't buy that.'' Named after the year of Boleyn's death, 1536 comes at the queen's story sideways. She is not seen on stage but is talked about by three young women who meet in an Essex field, in between work, to quibble and gossip about men, haircuts and the king's bride. Their predicaments gain chilling resonances as the local men become more puritanical, mirroring the patriarchal violence of Henry's court. This is not Pickett's first foray into historical drama – she has also written for Hulu series The Great, based on the life of Catherine the Great. She says 1536 grew from her interest in 'the whispered conversations between women' about Boleyn. ''Do you think she did it, though?' 'Do you really think he's going to kill her?'' Another oblique question was what the king's marriage has to do with them. 'That's something I really care about,' says Pickett. 'The way it permeates day-to-day lives.' By 'it' she means misogyny and the trickle-down effects of patriarchy, which, she makes clear, is not just the stuff of historical drama. 'For me it's absolutely about now,' she says. 'Of course it is. We still lower our voices and say, 'He did this thing – do you think that's weird?' We still question ourselves … There are men in positions of power who have done absolutely terrible things to women. What does it mean to watch them get elected or re-elected?' While writing the play, the misogyny around her became so glaring that she couldn't unsee the way it filtered through society. 'I'm interested in the subtlety [of it] and the way that men can change the air in a room,' she says. 'It's hard to name, hard to call out.' 1536 won the Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights in 2024. At the ceremony, Pickett called it 'a love letter to friendship'. She has a circle of female friends, some of whom she has known since school. This isn't as cosy as it sounds. These friendships, as glorious as they are, come with prickly edges: 'I feel so known by them and it can feel dangerous when you're fighting with someone who has known you since you were 14.' This is the side of 'sisterhood' that is not always acknowledged, she continues, because as women 'you're meant to be on the same side'. In 1536, Pickett felt 'a need to explore the ugliness of friendship. I think this idea that 'We're best friends and we'll always be best friends' in sisterhood is so untouchable. But it just isn't true. You have to really work at your friendships. That's beautiful, but it does also means that there are moments of real savagery.' Pickett started out wanting to act. Born in Essex, she was one of the first in her family to go to university (at Middlesex), and followed up her theatre degree with a master's from the Central School of Speech and Drama. 'That was great but when I came out it went so badly. I was one of the only people not to get an agent, I didn't know anyone in the industry, I was working in a cinema and had no money, so eventually I had to move back to Clacton. I was so embarrassed. I had made such a big deal about going to uni and wanting to be an actor.' And yet, at her lowest ebb, she started to write a sitcom, Essex Girls, about an eldest daughter who goes to London to realise her dreams and comes back having failed. 'I'd auditioned for a producer a couple of years earlier and still had his email so I wrote saying, 'Could you read it?' He read it and said, 'You have to come back to London.'' She did, and Pickett has straddled the worlds of theatre and TV ever since. She currently has a satire in development with Derry Girls' Lisa McGee. 'I have been incredibly lucky in that I have benefited from people holding the door open,' she says. 'It's so easy to back people when they've had some success. If you believe in someone's talent, you should get behind them. A producer got behind me with Essex Girls and it changed my life. My agent got behind me and it changed my life. Think about how many people would have kept going if someone had got behind them early.' 1536 is at the Almeida theatre, London, 6 May-7 June
The Guardian
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
US playwright ak payne wins Susan Smith Blackburn prize
The Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights has been awarded to the US writer ak payne for their poignant and funny two-hander Furlough's Paradise. The play has been described by payne as a 'lyrical journey about grief, home and survival'. It follows two cousins, one of whom is on a three-day release from prison, as the pair attend a funeral in their childhood town. 'I am so grateful to receive this award and join a list of some of my favourite writers whose plays have shaken how I understand the world,' said payne, namechecking past winners Katori Hall, Julia Cho, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, Benedict Lombe and Paula Vogel. Those playwrights 'have made it possible – through their words transcending space and time and/or their caring and abundant mentorship – for me to write,' payne added. The award comprises $25,000 (£19,000) and a signed print by artist Willem de Kooning. Furlough's Paradise was nominated for the prize by the Alliance theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, where the play had its premiere in 2024. The Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, best known for the play and film versions of Moonlight, said Furlough's Paradise charts 'what it means to try to find a utopia in a world that has a criminal justice system that is far from perfect'. McCraney taught payne at the David Geffen school of drama at Yale Universityin Connecticut and said they are 'one of the most powerful writers I've encountered in my time as a professor'. Next month, the play will be staged at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, where McCraney is artistic director. The Susan Smith Blackburn prize has also given special commendations to 49 Days by Haruna Lee and An Oxford Man by Else Went. The other finalists this year, chosen from more than 200 submissions, included Chris Bush's play Otherland, which is running at the Almeida theatre in London. Last year's winner, the Tudor drama 1536 by Ava Pickett, opens at the Almeida in May. The judges for the prize were costume designer Linda Cho; actors Indira Varma and Jennifer Ehle; Nancy Medina, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic; playwright Mark Ravenhill; and George Strus, who founded the new work development and community building hub Breaking the Binary theatre in New York.
Euronews
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Finalists named for longest-running women+'s playwrighting prize
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is the longest-running prize in theatre that celebrates women+ writing in English. Founded in 1978 after Susan Smith Blackburn, an alumna of the Smith College in Massachusetts who died in 1977, it has annually recognised incredible contributions to the art form. Previous winners include some of the last half-century's most influential writers, including later Pulitzer Prize-winners Lynn Nottage and Annie Baker, as well as some of Britain's celebrated writers such as Caryl Churchill and Lucy Prebble. In total, 11 winners of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. 2025's winner will be announced in New York City at Playwrights Horizons on 10 March. The winner will receive $25,000 (€24,000) and a signed and numbered print by artist Willem de Kooning commissioned for the prize. Judges will also award a special commendation prize of $10,000 (€9,600) to one of the nominees with each of the nine finalists receiving $5,000 (€4,800). This year's finalists include four US playwrights, alongside two from Britain, and individual writers from Ireland, Australia, and a Taiwanese-Japanese-US writer. They were picked from 200 plays from a pool of 400 theatres from North America, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand and the UK who could submit pieces that they had produced or are planning to produce. It's hoped that the prize can help get women+ writers' work to be more easily made and foster a greater international exchange of plays. Of the European productions nominated, there is the latest play by Australian playwright Suzie Miller, who shot to fame in the UK for her lauded legal drama 'Prima Facie', which had a West End run starring Jodie Comer as a London judge faced with defending her son who is accused of rape. Miller has been nominated for her newest play 'Inter Alia' which will premiere at London's National Theatre in July starring Rosamund Pike. Also from London is 'Otherland' by Chris Bush, one of Britain's most successful contemporary playwrights. Currently in rehearsal for a run at the Almeida Theatre starting 12 February, 'Otherland' discovers how life can open up for a couple after they untangle themselves from a break-up. The final UK production nominated is Scottish writer Isobel McArthur's play 'The Fair Maid of the West' which ran with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon last November. A modernisation of the Thomas Heywood's Elizabethan-era work, it plays into McArthur's particular skill for bringing older pieces into new relevance, as seen with her Olivier Award-winning play 'Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of)'. Alongside these plays, Irish playwright Carys Coburn has also been nominated for her show 'BÁN' by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Loosely based on Lorca's 'House of Bernarda Alba', Coburn puts the story of a powerful matriarch and her five daughters in a 1980s Irish setting. The full nominees are as follows: Chris Bush (UK) 'Otherland' Carys Coburn (Ireland) 'BÁN' Keiko Green (US) 'You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World' Haruna Lee (Taiwan-Japan-US) '49 Days' Isobel McArthur (UK-Scotland) 'The Fair Maid of the West' Suzie Miller (Australia-UK) 'Inter Alia' a.k. payne (US) 'Furlough's Paradise' Else Went (US) 'An Oxford Man'
