Kimberly Senior

Behzad Dabu

Erin Shea Brady

Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department faculty and alumni are teaming up for the Chicago premiere of Inana, Michele Lowe’s drama about an Iraqi museum curator trying to save treasured antiquities from destruction in the 2003 American invasion of Baghdad. Inana is directed by Kimberly Senior, an adjunct faculty member at the Columbia College Theatre Department and recipient of an Excellence in Teaching Award from the college. The production’s cast includes Behzad Dabu, who graduated with honors in 2008 from Columbia’s Acting Program. And Senior’s assistant director, Erin Shea Brady, is a 2013 graduate of the Theatre Directing Program at Columbia. Brady recently served as dramaturg for Remy Bumppo Theatre’s production of Travesties, whose cast included Columbia Theatre faculty member Scott Olson.

Senior and Dabu are both Associate Artists at TimeLine, one of Chicago’s most acclaimed nonprofit theatre companies. The two worked together previously in 2012 on the drama Disgraced at Chicago-based American Theater Company, which Senior directed with Dabu in the cast. The play subsequently received the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and Senior directed the Broadway premiere of Disgraced with a different cast. However, Dabu will appear in Disgraced when it returns to Chicago in the fall in a new production at Goodman Theatre, again directed by Senior.

Inana begins previews May 6, opens May 14, and runs through July 26 at TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, Chicago. For tickets to Inana, click here or call 773-281-8463, ext. 6.