The 2023 Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies was awarded to Lisa Biggs for her book, The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation, published by The Ohio State University Press in 2022.
In the Healing Stage, Dr. Lisa Biggs traces four ensembles of currently and formerly incarcerated women and their collaborating artists who use performance to challenge harmful policies and popular discourses that justify locking up “bad” women. This exceptional work brings to the fore the critical performance work being done by Black women artists in dialogue with incarcerated women. The Healing Stage recognizes and illuminates the rigors of performance studies research, where artistic practice is studied as both subject and method of transformative justice. Biggs weaves stories and analysis, drama and healing, performance theory and method to draw back the curtain on incarceration, womanhood, and survival of the spirit.