Michele Lowe Wins Primus Prize for Inana

Playwright Michele Lowe has won the The Francesca Primus Prize for her play Inana. The announcement was made today at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center by Christopher Rawson, president of the American Theatre Critics Association, which administers the award.

The $10,000 award honors outstanding contributions to the American theater by an emerging female theater artist who has not yet achieved national prominence. The award is made possible through the generosity of the Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation, which honors the writer, critic, performer and dramaturg who died of lung cancer in 1992 at age 42.

Inana, which had its world premiere at the Denver Center Theatre Company’s Colorado New Play Summit, is a love story about an Iraqi museum curator’s desperate attempt to save an ancient and treasured statue before the US invasion of his country. The play is currently on stage at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.