The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for women playwrights has been awarded to Clare Barron, The New York Times reports. Barron, who is also an actress, won $25,000 and a signed print by Willem de Kooning for her play “Dance Nation,” about a pre-teen dance competition. The Off Broadway nonprofit Playwrights Horizons will produce the premiere of “Dance Nation” in April 2018.
“I wrote this play because I wanted to explore ambition and how that intersects with gender,” Barron explained, according to the Blackburn Prize website. “More literally, I was inspired by ‘Dance Moms’ — a horrific reality TV show where a grown woman verbally abuses and bullies pre-teen girls and everyone’s kind of okay with it.”
“Dance Nation” will cast “actors of all ages and races to play the young girls,” the Blackburn website details. Previously, the American Playwriting Foundation honored the play with the 2016 Relentless Award, given in memory of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
A recipient of the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship and the Paula Vogel Award at the Vineyard, Barron’s other playwriting credits include Obie-winning “You Got Older” directed by Anne Kauffman, “I’ll Never Love Again,” and “Baby Screams Miracle.”
Barron “has the rare gift of being both oblique and perfectly clear — or as clear as one can be about the irresoluble conflicts of life,” the Times wrote in its review of “I’ll Never Love Again.” Based on Barron’s teenage diaries, the play features a choir of many Clares — “of assorted shapes, sizes, sexes. and ethnicities.”
Each year, the Blackburn Prize recognizes “an outstanding new English-language play by a woman,” its website writes. The Prize “reflects the values and interests of Susan Smith Blackburn, noted American actress and writer.” Previous winners include Lynn Nottage for “Sweat,” a drama set in a Pennsylvania town rocked by rumors of layoffs at the local factory; Tena Stivicic for “3 Winters,” a family saga that traces the lives of women across four generations; and Lucy Kirkwood for “Chimerica,” a moral and political look at Chinese-American relations.
