Category: New Science-in-Theatre Play

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Nick Payne’s Incognito Dates for London and Newcastle

The Bush Theatre in London has announced that Nick Payne’s new play Incognito will form part of its 2014 season. Joe Murphy will direct the production which runs between 14 May and 21 June 2014, after premiering at the High Tide Festival in April.

In addition to featuring a plot about the theft of Einstein’s brain during his autopsy in 1955, Incognito also deals with Henry M, whose neurosurgery for epilepsy in 1957 permitted new insights into the nature of memory. A third theme about a modern day neuropsychologist facing the breakdown of her marriage completes a trio of interwoven tales.

There will also be previews of Incognito at the Live Theatre in Newcastle 3-5 April 2014 followed by a full production later the same month.

Incognito

 

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Science on Stage 2013: A Year in Review

The year 2013 has been a good one for the science-in-theatre genre with numerous performances of established classics staged throughout the world as well as new plays appearing on the scene.

The year began with the final few performances of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect at The National Theatre in London. The complexities of love amid a neuropharmacology clinical trial attracted both sell-out audiences and a clutch of awards and nominations for the Headlong/NT team.

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s new version of Brecht’s A Life of Galileo in the Swan Theatre brought audiences to Stratford-Upon-Avon to enjoy a lively and musical production with set-design by Tom Scutt.

Several new plays portraying the history of science opened throughout the year. Operation Epsilon by Alan Brody premiered in Boston USA, dealing with the post-war detention of German nuclear scientists and offering an intriguing postscript to Michael Frayn’s mighty Copenhagen. STELLA, a new play by Sibohan Nicholas featuring portrayals of 18th Century astronomers Caroline and William Herschel, opened in Brighton in May and went on to tour small venues in the UK and Ireland throughout the summer.

A highlight of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August was Adura Onashile’s portrayal of Henrietta Lacks in her one-woman show HeLa. Onashile’s performance brought the story of Lacks treatment in the 1950s and the prolifically multiplying cell line that has lived on in the decades since her death to ever-wider audiences. The wartime code-breaking endeavors of Alan Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park were also brought to life at the Edinburgh Festival in Idle Motion’s immensely imaginative That is All You Need to Know.

As ever, Frayn’s Copenhagen and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia proved popular choices for professional and amateur theatre companies throughout the world. In Hong Kong there was a reading of Copenhagen in Mandarin in October and as well as a revival of a production given by Nobel laureates in Gothenburg in December. The appeal of Arcadia was confirmed this year when it was voted fourth in a list of the Britain’s favorite plays.

There are promising events in store for 2014 with the world premiere of Dava Sobel’s play about Copernicus And the Sun Stood Still set for production in Denver in April. With new tours of STELLA, Hanging Hooke and A Life of Galileo on the cards in the UK as well as a new play about neuroscience on the way from Constellations playwright Nick Payne, 2014 is looking bright for science-in-theatre.

 

 

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Incognito: Nick Payne Tackles Neuroscience in New Play

A new play about neuroscience by Nick Payne will premiere at the HighTide festival in Suffolk in 2014. Payne, who enjoyed success with Constellations, has written Incognito for the festival which takes place in Halseworth between 10-19 April. According to the Guardian, Incognito has a similarly complex structure to Constellations and weaves several stories, including a plot about the autopsy in which Einstein’s brain was removed and dissected in 1955.

Incognito will be in preview at Theatre Live Newcastle between 3-5 April and will also be performed at the North Wall Arts Centre in Oxford between 6-10 May 2014.

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Mathematics and Theatre to Reconverge in Manchester

The similarity between mathematics and the constructed world of the theatre is one of the themes addressed in X&Y, a new production recently performed at London’s Science Museum. Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy and actor Victoria Gould, who play the two characters X and Y,  joined forces to develop the play after working together previously on Complicite theatre company’s A Disappearing Number. X&Y will also be performed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester between the 30th October and 3rd November 2013 as part of Manchester Science Festival.

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Sleep Science Performance Returns to London

somˈniloquy   n. the act or habit of speaking during sleep.
Oxford English Dictionary

Somniloquy, a new monologue written by Craig Baxter for the 2013 Hotbed Festival, is being staged again as part of a four week run at London’s Theatre 503. The 25 minute piece, which is performed by Jasmine Hyde, follows a young woman through a night of observation at a sleep laboratory. Baxter wrote the monolougue in collaboration with sleep scientist Prof. Richard Horner as part of Menagerie Theatre Company’s ‘What’s Up Doc?’ scheme which pairs playwrights with thought leaders and academics. The practical issues of portraying someone sleeping on stage are overcome with imaginative set design by Nicky Bunch.

Jasmin Hyde also performs with Mark Oosterveen in Steve Waters’ Why Can’t We Live Together?, a  powerful and moving new play tracking the relationship of a couple over the first decade of the 21st Century. The triple bill is completed with another curiously arresting performance from Oosterveen in Hisham Matar’s How to Begin.

The three plays will be performed together between 15th October and 9th November at Theatre 503 in Battersea, London.

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Stella: Astronomy History on Autumn Tour

Take the Space theatre company have embarked on an autumn tour of their new play Stella. Having already visited venues in Guildford and Grantham during September, Siobhán Nicholas’ play featuring astronomers Caroline and William Herschel will be performed in Canterbury, Portsmouth, Edinburgh and Eastbourne during October and November.

Further details of the tour dates and venues are available on Take the Space’s website.

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Henrietta Lacks Show in Edinburgh

As the Edinburgh Festival Fringe enters its final few days there is still a chance to see HeLa, Adura Onashile’s one woman show about the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks.

When Lacks attended the Johns Hopkins Memorial Hospital for treatment in 1951, a sample of tissue was taken without her knowledge. The now famous HeLa cell-line has played a role in many medical breakthroughs in the decades since.

The evocative wooden-panelled setting of the Old Anatomy Lecture Theatre in Edinburgh’s Summerhall provides a backdrop for this new piece of physical theatre. Adura Onashile’s powerful and versatile performance captivates for the whole hour as the play examines some of the ethical questions surrounding the treatment of the Lacks family and the scientific significance of the HeLa cell-line.

Meanwhile, at the same venue Jack Klaff stars in a 75 minute show about the life of Isaac Newton, first performed the the Gravity Fields Festival in Grantham in 2012.

HeLa, produced by Iron-Oxide, is on daily at 6.45pm at Summerhall, Edinburgh until 25th August 2013. Newton plays at the same venue at 5pm.

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Stella: History is written in the stars

The three night run of Stella at the Greenwich Theatre begins on Thursday 11th July. The first night performance will be followed by a Q&A session with the play’s writer Siobhán Nicholas and astronomer Radmila Topalovic.

StageScite caught this new play about Caroline and William Herschel when it premiered at the Old Market Theatre in Brighton in May 2013.  Actors Chris Barnes and Kathryn Pogson joined Nicholas on stage to play the four roles, with Barnes doubling up to play the both the husband of present-day astronomer Jessica and William Herschel in the 18th Century. Nicholas herself took on the role of William’s sister Caroline who was his sometime assistant and an accomplished astronomer in her own right.

When musician Bill is offered a job with an orchestra in Germany, the chance to relocate raises a conflict with his wife Jessica whose own successful career as an astronomer is rooted in England. Jessica is also following her historical  interest in the Herschels, which takes her on a research trip to Bath to study Caroline Herschel’s private diaries. As Jessica’s investigations progress and her relationship with Bill becomes increasing strained, we are presented with interleaved scenes from the lives of the Herschels, whose own individual aspirations and careers are also pulling them in different directions.

Stella received special mention in the judging for the New Writing South Best New Play Award 2013. It runs at the Greenwich Theatre in London on 11th, 12th and 13th July 2013.

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New Writing Festivals are a Hotbed of Science

Cambridge, London, Colchester and Bury will all play host to new writing this month as Managerie Theatre Company’s annual Hotbed Festival expands into new locations.

Specially commissioned one act plays, workshops and works-in-progress will feature at venues including the Cambridge Junction and London’s Soho Theatre.

A new project this year – ‘What’s Up Doc?‘  – pairs playwrights with expert thought leaders to produce new writing for the festival. Of particular note is Somniloquy by Craig Baxter, who has written a 20 minute monologue about sleep and its disorders with expert advice from Professor Richard Horner of the University of Toronto. The monologue will be performed by Jasmine Hyde and explores the function of different sleep cycles in the light of latest ideas on the dynamic nature of sleep.

Other new works at this year’s festival include What Did It Feel Like To Go To The Moon? by poet Lucy Sheerman (written in collaboration with Al Worden, command pilot on the 1971 Apllo 15 lunar mission) and an initial glimpse of A Broken Replicate: Altered Skin which looks at processes in genetics through theatre and dance.

The Hotbed Festival will be visiting three new locations during July after opening at its usual home in Cambridge.

Somniloquy will be performed in Cambridge on 12th and 14th July, in Colchester on 19th and 21st July and in London on the 23rd and 26th July.

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The Effect of Success

Lucy Prebble’s 2012 play set in a clinical trials facility has been shortlisted for another writing prize. The Effect, which has already won a Critics Circle Award is one of five plays nominated for the James Tait Black Prize, coordinated by Edinburgh University. James Tait Black Memorial Prizes for fiction and biography were established in 1919 but this is the first time a prize has been offered for drama. A panel of judges representing Edinburgh University, The National Theatre of Scotland and The Traverse Theatre will decide on the winning play which will be read in Edinburgh on the 5th August 2013.

The Effect was staged at The National Theatre from November 2012 to February 2013 and was a co-production with Headlong. Bille Piper and Jonjo O’Neill starred as a couple who apparently fall in love during a neuropharmacology drug trial.

(Update: The winning play has been announced as The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning by Tim Price.)