Pickett’s ‘very funny and very angry’ play 1536 follows three women as they discuss the arrest of Anne Boleyn

The British playwright Ava Pickett has won this year’s Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights.

Pickett’s winning play, 1536, unfolds in Tudor Essex and follows three women as they discuss the news of Anne Boleyn’s arrest. Pickett called it a “very funny and very angry play” about female friendship. In a ceremony at the Royal Court theatre in London on Monday, she was awarded $25,000 (£19,900) and a signed print by Willem de Kooning.