Lucy Prebble has been named the winner of this year’s Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the world’s most prominent award for women playwrights.
She picks up the prize for A Very Expensive Poison, her play about the assassination of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko and his wife Marina’s quest for justice, which premiered at the Old Vic theatre last year.
The Standard’s review called Prebble’s play “swaggeringly inventive”.
MyAnna Buring starred as Marina in the play, and told the Standard: “She came in very early on in rehearsals and Tom and I had coffee with her and met with up with her and heard about her life and her life with Sasha. She was the most generous woman and is the embodiment of grace.”
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, which was established in 1977, sees the winning playwright receive $25,000.
Prebble has previously been shortlisted for her other plays The Sugar Syndrome, The Effect and ENRON. Her win follows Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, which triumphed last year and ran at the Young Vic until January. Other winners include Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica, Clare Barron’s Dance Nation and Annie Baker’s The Flick.
Another $10,000 was also awarded to Aleshea Harris for What To Send Up When It Goes Down, a play about people of colour who lost their lives to "racialised violence".
Ten plays were shortlisted from 160 entries. The rest of the shortlist features The King of Hell's Palace by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play by Kimber Lee, Confederates by Dominique Morisseau, Endlings by Celine Song, Shipwreck by Anne Washburn, Golden Shield by Anchuli Felicia King, Out of Water by Zoe Cooper and Nora: A Doll's House by Stef Smith.
Prebble's The Effect will open later this month at the the Boulevard Theatre starring Kate O'Flynn and Eric Kofi Abrefa as two young volunteers of a clinical trial who begin to fall for each other.
