Katori Hall Wins 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

Katori Hall has won the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play, Hurt Village. The award was presented to her at a private ceremony held in New York on Monday, February 28. As part of the award, Hall received a $20,000 cash prize and a signed and numbered print by Willem de Kooning, which the artist created especially for the Blackburn Prize.

The prize honors outstanding new English-language plays by women. As previously reported, finalists — all of whom receive a $1000 cash prize — included Lisa D’Amour, Sam Burns, Paines Plough, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Georgia Fitch, Lisa Kron, Tamsin Oglesby, Anne Washburn, Joy Wilkinson, and Alex Wood.

Hall’s The Mountaintop, which won an Olivier Award for Best New Play, is expected to debut on Broadway in Fall 2011 with Halle Berry and Samuel L. Jackson heading the cast.

Her plays also include Hoodoo Love, Remembrance, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, and Freedom Train. She is a member of the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop and the Dramatists Guild. Hall was also named the 2010 recipient of the William Inge Theatre Festival’s Otis Guernsey New Voices in the American Theatre Award.

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