The American playwright Sarah Mantell has won this year’s Susan Smith Blackburn prize for their play In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot.
Written for a cast of seven female, non-binary and transgender actors, all aged over 50, the play is described by Mantell as exploring “queer ageing, capitalism, campfires and falling in love as the world ends”. It follows a group of itinerant warehouse workers on their night shifts as they search for people they have lost.
The 10 finalists for the prize included four plays recently staged in the UK: Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden, Ruby Thomas’s Linck & Mülhahn, Maryam Hamidi’s Moonset and Anupama Chandrasekhar’s The Father and the Assassin.
When Mantell wrote the play, they said, “my wildest dream was that it would become something my generation of actors could age towards. There are so few roles for women, trans and non-binary actors in the second half of their careers, when many of them are just hitting the peak of their ability.” Winning the prize, they added, means “it suddenly seems like that wild dream is possible”.
Almost 200 plays were submitted for consideration for the award for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights, which has run since 1978. Mantell wins a cash prize of $25,000, and a signed limited-edition print by the artist Willem de Kooning. The nine finalists each receive an award of $5,000. They include Katie Holly (Her Hand on the Trellis), Karen Hartman (New Golden Age), Kimber Lee (saturday), Francisca Da Silveira (Pay No Worship) and ak payne (Amani).
The judging panel for this year’s prize comprised Cabaret director Rebecca Frecknall, producer Eleanor Lloyd, actor Lucian Msamati, playwright Julia Cho, choreographer Raja Feather Kelly and actor Amy Ryan.
