Brent Lang Executive Editor Sarah Mantell has been awarded the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for their play “In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot.” The prestigious honor has been awarded annually since 1978, and 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. The theatre and playwriting community gathered at Playwrights Horizons in New York City to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the prize and to honor Mantell and nine other finalists.
Mantell, the first out, nonbinary playwright to win the prize, received a cash award of $25,000, and a signed limited-edition print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, which was created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
The play is set on the precipice of the end of a world wracked by climate change. It follows oa 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.
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