Photos: See Raja Feather Kelly, Sarah Ruhl & More at the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Event

On Monday night, the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize was awarded to U.S. playwright Sarah Mantell for their play In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot at Playwrights Horizons.

See photos of the evening below!

Awarded annually since 1978, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is the largest and oldest international award recognizing women+ who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre. Women+ includes trans and nonbinary playwrights. Notables in attendance for the special night included Executive Artistic Director of National Black Theatre, Jonathan McCrory; Artistic Director of Mermaid Theatre, Julie Kelleher; Co-Artistic Director of MCC and Casting Agent, William Cantler; past winners of the Prize, Gina Gionfriddo and Sarah Ruhl; and more.

Mantell, the first out, nonbinary playwright to win the Prize, garnered a cash award of $25,000, and a signed limited-edition print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The 9 finalists each received an award of $5,000.

Mantell describes In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot as "a play about queer aging, capitalism, campfires and falling in love as the world ends". Set on the precipice of the end of a world wracked by climate change, the play tells the story of a group of itinerant friends traveling together between warehouses, working night shifts and checking the address labels of the packages searching for people they've lost. The cast of seven consists of women, trans and nonbinary actors, all over 50.

The Judges for the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize praised Mantell's play for its creation of a compelling dystopian and highly theatricalized world inhabited by complex and vivid characters who rarely have stage time. The political critique and highly personal elements of the play deftly intertwine to ignite and propel the action and the imagination.

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize reflects the values and passions of Susan Smith Blackburn, noted American feminist, actress and writer who lived in London during the last 15 years of her life. She died in 1977 at the age of 42. The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize was founded in 1978 by Susan's sister, Emilie "Mimi" Kilgore, and Susan's husband, William "Bill" Blackburn.

For her tireless work on behalf of women+ playwrights, Mimi Kilgore received a TCG Funders Award and a Lillys Lifetime Achievement Award. She was revered as a champion of artists in every field, but particularly of women+ playwrights. Mimi passed away in 2022 in Houston. In Mimi's honor, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize announced the establishment of a new component of the Prize, a "Mimi" Award, the parameters of which will be announced over the summer.

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