⟨Theatre|Science⟩
The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company have announced that they will include Dava Sobel’s play And the Sun Stood Still in their spring 2014 programme. Billed as a world premiere, this is the first time the play about Copernicus will be fully staged by a professional company.
And the Sun Stood Still will run from March 27th – April 29th 2014 in Boulder, Colodardo, USA.
Last month StageScite posted preliminary tour dates for the new science history play Stella, which features astronomers Caroline and William Herschel among its characters. Take the Space Theatre Company will also be be taking Stella to Maidenhead on 11 June and to the Greenwich Theatre in London between 11-13 July, details below.
Stella is in the running for the New Writing South Best New Play award at this year’s Brighton Fringe Festival, where it premieres on 29th May. Writing for the Old Market Theatre, playwright Siobhán Nicholas says that this is the first time Take the Space will open a new production in their home town.
Full Tour Dates for Stella
Performance dates have been announced for the new play about astronomer Caroline Herschel. Stella, by Siobhán Nicholas will have its first performances at the Old Market Theatre in Brighton on 29 and 30 May 2013 as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. StageScite is also aware of touring performances in Kingston on 4th June, Scarborough on 21st June and Oxford on 27th and 28th June.
Described by Take the Space Theatre Company as a ‘story about women and astronomy’, Stella features Caroline and William Herschel in a drama set across two 
centuries.
Future Performances of Stella
Heisenberg: It’s like a pre-war house party – one of those house parties in a play, that’s cut off from any contact with the outside world, where you know the guests have all been invited for some secret sinister purpose.
Copenhagen Act One, Michael Frayn, 1998
In July 1945 the Allied Forces imprisoned ten scientists associated with the German wartime nuclear programme in an English country house near Cambridge. For nearly six months the conversations between the captives were secretly recorded in an attempt to determine how close the Nazis came to developing a nuclear weapon.
The transcripts from Farm Hall were declassified in 1992, providing valuable source material for historians and writers intrigued by what happened there. The Farm Hall operation is depicted in Adam Ganz’s 2010 radio play Nuclear Reactions and provided important background material for Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen.
Operation Epsilon is a new stage play by Alan Brody depicting the internment at Farm Hall. It premiered at Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, MA, USA on 7th March 2013, produced by The Nora Theatre Company under the direction of Andy Sandberg. The company works with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop plays representing science in theatre.
The recordings made at Farm Hall were inconclusive about the true state of the Nazi nuclear programme. However, the reactions of the scientists to the news of the bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945 were enlightening, with Otto Hahn initially said to have considered suicide. Although the events at Farm Hall have been examined before, there seems to be sufficient dramatic material available to sustain new writing, making Brody’s new play an intriguing prospect.
Operation Epsilon runs at the Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, MA, USA until 28 April 2013.
The success of Nick Payne’s play Constellations has expanded into multiple continents. An Australian production of Constellations is currently at the Melbourne Arts Centre until 23 March 2013. Meanwhile, amid rumours of a transfer to New York, Nick Payne has said in an interview with Matilda Battersby that a Hollywood film adaptation of Constellations is currently being planned. According to Payne’s literary agents, he is also working on a new play about theoretical physicist Paul Dirac.
Dava Sobel’s 2011 book ‘A More Perfect Heaven’ about Nicolaus Copernicus includes a short play called ‘And the Sun Stood Still’. It imagines Copernicus’ meeting with Georg Rheticus in 1539 and the events that may have led Copernicus to publish his theory that Earth revolves around the the sun.
Sobel will be speaking about Copernicus this week at an event on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It will be followed by a performance of ‘And the Sun Stood Still’, given by members of the Pistarckle Theater Company.
Despite previous public readings of the play, this is the first full performance of ‘And the Sun Stood Still’ of which StageScite is aware. The performance will take place at 7pm on Thursday 21st Feburary in Prior-Jollek Hall on the U.S. Virgin island of St. Thomas.
The 19th Feburary 2013 was the 540th anniversary of Copernicus’ birth, as marked by a Google Doodle.
Two new ‘science in theatre’ plays that have enjoyed mainstream success in London’s West End have picked up an impressive number of nominations in the ‘What’s On Stage Awards’ 2013.
‘Constellations’ by Nick Payne and ‘The Effect’ by Lucy Prebble have both been nominated in the Best New Play category with Sally Hawkins and Billie Piper each receiving Best Actress nominations for their respective performances.
The Royal Court Theatre’s production of ‘Constellations’ also picked up nominations for Tom Scutt’s set design and Lee Curran’s lighting design.
Both ‘Constellations’ and the National Theatre/Headlong production of ‘The Effect’ have been critically well-received and commercially successful during 2012/13, bringing physics and neuro-pharmacology to the West End stage.
The winners of the ‘What’s On Stage Theatregoers’ Choice Awards’ will be announced at a ceremony at London’s Palace Theatre on Sunday 17th February 2013. The event will be streamed online from 7pm.
The Menagerie Theatre Company is developing a new production during 2013. ‘The Altruists’ is the latest play by Craig Baxter who also wrote ‘Let Newton Be!’ and ‘Re:Design‘ (based on the correspondence of Charles Darwin and Asa Gray).
‘The Altruists‘, which has already won Baxter the STAGE new writing award, concerns George Price, who performed ground breaking work with John Maynard Smith and Bill Hamilton in the 1960s on the mathematical and evolutionary basis of altruism.
The new play had its first public reading in October 2012 and a production is in development this year. Craig Baxter and director Patrick Morris will be speaking about the ‘The Alturists’ at a special event at Cambridge Science Festival on 23 March 2013.
The acclaimed Take the Space Theatre Company is developing a new production in 2013.‘Stella’ by Siobhán Nicholas is inspired by the lives and work of 18th century astronomers William and Caroline Herschel. The play apparently crosses time and space, also featuring a contemporary fictional astronomer Jessica Bell.
The new production is due to start touring in June 2013. Listen to Siobhán Nicholas talking about writing the play and the many talents of Caroline Herschel in this radio interview from March 2012:
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