The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, which celebrates its 30th Anniversary this year, will mark the milestone with a special project saluting the accomplishments of female playwrights in Houston in an upcoming reading. Women in Theatre: Houston Voices will be presented Sunday, March 9 at 3:00 p.m. on the Alley Theatre’s Neuhaus Stage
Five short works by local playwrights will be presented as dramatic readings at the Alley Theatre’s Neuhaus Stage. Excerpts from previous Susan Smith Blackburn Prize honorees will also be read. A reception with the playwrights and artists will follow and is free and open to the public.
The recipient of the 2008 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize will be announced at a ceremony March 10 at the Alley Theatre.
Women in Theatre: Houston Voices is produced by a city-wide creative coalition of 5 Houston theatres: Alley Theatre, The Ensemble Theatre, Theater LaB Houston, Main Street Theater and Stages Repertory Theatre.
The short plays and scenes to be performed in commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize were selected from a regional competition juried by the five producing theatres. Playwrights of the chosen works will receive an honorarium - Sink Hole by Mary Ellen Whitworth, Sassafras Girls by Celeste Bedford Walker, The Potato Feast by C. Denby Swanson, Nearing Velocity by Elizabeth Gilbert and Militia Slumber Party, or Embracing the New World Order by Crystal Jackson.
Women in Theatre: Houston Voices is made possible by funding from The Brown Foundation, Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, Houston Endowment Inc. and the Bob and Vivian Smith Foundation.
The ten finalists for the 2008 The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, chosen from 92 submitted plays this year, include Linda Brogan - Black Crows, Lydia Diamond - Stick Fly, Bryony Lavery - Stockholm, Lisa McGee - Girls and Dolls, Linda McLean - Strangers, Babies, Julie Marie Myatt - Boats on a River, Jenny Schwartz - God’s Ear, Polly Stenham -That Face, Victoria Stewart - Hardball and Judith Thompson - Palace of the End.
The to be announced winner will be awarded $20,000 at a ceremony on Monday, March 10th at the Alley Theatre, and will also receive a signed and numbered print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Special Commendations of $5,000 may be given at the discretion of the judges, and each of the additional finalists receives $1,000.
More About Women in Theatre: Houston Voices Playwrights
Elizabeth Gilbert’s plays include Door Wolves, Effects of Thunder, Transmigration of Existence, Tolstoy is Dead!, The Children of Other Mothers, Release Yearning and Picturing Family Stories. She is the Artistic Director of Women's Works, dedicated to developing the voices of women in Houston using the medium of theater. Elizabeth has been a recipient of three grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright - Hayes Fellowship in Istanbul, Turkey through the University of Texas at Austin. She has also received playwrighting grants from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County and an Artist Performance Residency at DiverseWorks in Houston.
Crystal Jackson, playwright and native Houstonian, is the founder of theatre cooperative Six of One Productions. She earned her creative writing degree at University of Houston, where she studied with Edward Albee and Lanford Wilson. Produced in theatres from Billings, Montana to New York City, her work has been reviewed as "politically ferocious" with "substantial laughs." Crystal's one-act play Please Remove This Stuffed Animal from My Head recently won People's Choice and Best Production awards at Venture Theatre and was produced in the EstroGenius festival in New York.
Native Houstonian, C. Denby Swanson is a graduate of Smith College, the National Theatre Institute, and the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers. She has been a William Inge Playwright in Residence, a Jerome Fellow and a McKnight Advancement Grant recipient. Her work has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater and developed through the Culture Project’s IMPACT Festival, the Southern Playwrights Festival, Icicle Creek Theater Festival, the Women Playwrights Project, the Estro-Genius Festival, the Lark Theater’s Playwrights Week, PlayLabs, and New York Stage & Film (through P73). She is a Core member of The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and the NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence at Zachary Scott Theatre Center.
Celeste Bedford Walker is an award-winning playwright whose works have been performed in major venues across the country. She is the recipient of several honors and awards, including being selected as a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (1999-2000) for Distant Voices, the NAACP Image Award for positive portrayal of African-Americans in the media; New York's Audelco Award, as well as being honored in the Ensemble Theatre's Salute to Texas Playwrights. Recently she was commissioned by the Alley Theatre to write a touring play about Barbara Jordan. Her military drama Camp Logan will be featured in the February premiere of the Bauhaus Media documentary The Camp Logan Mutiny.
Mary Ellen Whitworth is an environmental engineer who writes plays. She has won five short playwriting contests. She studied with Edward Albee. She is the Executive Director of the Bayou Preservation Association, a member of the Dramatist Guild and currently serves as the Program Chair of Scriptwriters/Houston. -- www.alleytheatre.org
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