⟨Theatre|Science⟩
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.
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.
Alan Turing and the Bletchley Park story get the theatrical treatment at the Edinburgh Fringe this year in Idle Motion‘s new play That is All You Need to Know. This piece of physical theatre uses brilliantly imaginative stagecraft to tell the stories of some of the people who tried to save the wartime code-breaking site from the brink of destruction. It also tells the tales of some of the people who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and who weren’t allowed to talk openly about what they did for decades afterwards.
Music, movement, drama, stunningly simple visual effects and commanding performances combined to make this a captivating experience when StageScite caught That is All You Need to Know at the Greenwich Theatre in June.
That is All You Need to Know is at the Zoo Southside, Edinburgh at 17:05 on 2nd-24th August 2013 (not 11th and 18th).
The production will also be at the Oxford Playhouse on 5th September 2013.
The BBC radio version of Charlotte Jones’ Humble Boy’ is available to listen to online until 28 July 2013. The 2001 play touches on ideas in string theory and cosmology. Although the science itself is not the main theme in Humble Boy, the play is nevertheless quirky and a little absurd in a similar fashion to Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists.
The 2007 BBC radio version stars Diana Rigg and Adrian Scarborough and was adapted by Steven Canny.
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.
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.
The current production of Arcadia at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Fransisco has been extended for a further week. The play, directed by Carey Perloff, was originally due to close on 9th June but will now run until Sunday 16th June 2013.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5dfQSYZS0k?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
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
On the 5th May 2013 theatregoers in the USA will be able to choose from no less than five different productions of David Auburn’s Proof.
The Hershey Area Playhouse in Pennsylvania is putting on Proof between 25th April and 5th May. Meanwhile, Proof will also be performed at the Bishop Connolly Black Box Theatre in Fall River, Massachusetts on 3rd-5th May and at the the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield, Illinois on the same dates.
For those on the West Coast of the US, Humbolt State University are performing Proof in Arcata, California from 2nd-5th May and it’s also on at The Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles until 12th May.
In the UK, the recent Menier Chocolate Factory production of Proof will be at Bath’s Theatre Royal from 29th April to 4th May 2103.
Is this cluster of Proofs a statistical fluke or is there method behind the mathematics?