Playwright and director Craig Lucas has been named the Intiman Theatre's associate artistic director for the Seattle theatre's 2002-2003 season. Among his duties will be directing Joe Orton's Loot in the fall, overseeing a new play commission grant and writing a new play and an adaptation for the company.

Lucas was Tony nominated for his play Prelude to a Kiss and won an Obie Award for his direction of Harry Kondoleon's Saved or Destroyed. His other works include Stranger, Thy Dying Gaul, This Thing of Darkness and Blue Window. Kondoleon's Play Yourself, directed by Lucas, opened July 10 at the Century Center for the Performing Arts.

His bond with the Intiman began while he and Intiman artistic director Bartlett Sher were working on a Seattle production of The Dying Gaul. Lucas also workshopped his new work, The Singing Forest, in Seattle, although with ACT Theatre, who commissioned the work.

The playwright mentoring program Lucas will lead will include a $5,000 commission for a new work, thanks to a grant from the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project. Lucas will select the writer of the best new play utilizing science and technology and assist in the development of the work at the Intiman.

— By Christine Ehren