Tails of Wasps, a new play by local Stephanie Timm (which New Century Theater Company will perform in March), has been nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Finalists get thousands of dollars and the winner gets tens of thousands of dollars—plus a signed, numbered Willem de Kooning lithograph. (De Kooning was a friend of Blackburn, who died in 1977.)

I'd have to vote for Crumbs Are Also Bread—produced by WET several years ago—as my favorite Timm play so far, though her 2012 Ramayana with Yussef El Guindi seemed like the promising beginning to a new annual tradition. (Hey ACT, are there any plans to bring that back?)

But I look forward to the arrival of Wasps—I hear NCTC is turning a seldom-used, second-story room at ACT with a wall of windows facing the street (Buster's Cabaret, which used to be home to Late Nite Catechism) into an immersive, hotel-suite set where the story (about a politician, sex, and his downfall) takes place.

Congratulations Stephanie!