Jamie Pachino of Los Angeles has been awarded the $10,000 2009 Francesca Primus Prize for her play Splitting Infinity. Primus Citations were given to playwrights Jennifer Haley and Kathryn Walat.
The Primus Prize is given annually to an emerging woman theatre artist, either playwright, artistic director or director. Included in the award is a trip to this summer’s ATCA conference at the O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut.
Splitting Infinity “focuses on Leigh, a Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist, who pursues evidence of God through physics,” according to the award administrators. “The polarity between faith and science finds dramatic expression in two relationships, the first with a handsome rabbi, Saul, and the other with Robbie, a young graduate student who idolizes her.”
Splitting Infinity was commissioned by the Steppenwolf Theatre and premiered at the Geva Theatre, directed by Mark Cuddy and starring Elizabeth Hess and Michael Rupert. It has had subsequent productions at San Jose Rep, Florida Stage and elsewhere. It has already received such recognition as the Laurie Foundation Theatre Visionary Award and the STAGE International Script Competition (Professional Artists Lab/California NanoSystems Institute), plus awards from the Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition, the Ashland New Plays Festival, and the Becket Arts Festival.
Informed of her award, playwright Pachino said, “The Primus Prize is one that is extremely respected by women playwrights and I am so honored and delighted to be recognized.”
Pachino has been writing plays for more than a decade, and her work includes Waving Goodbye, The Return to Morality, Aurora’s Motive and Race. Her plays have been produced and developed at theaters ranging from Steppenwolf to the American Conservatory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse and Northlight Theatre. She also has extensive writing credits for both film and television, and she is an actress and choreographer. ATCA is the nationwide organization of theatre critics, an affiliate of the International Association of Theatre Critics. In addition to the Primus Prize, it administers the $40,000 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award. ATCA members also recommend a regional theater for the annual Tony Award and vote on induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
For more information, go to http://www.playbill.com/news/article/136246-Playwright-Pachino-Gets-Primus-Prize-Haley-and-Walat-Also-Cited
