Author: Science Centre Stage

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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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Life of Galileo to Tour in 2014

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s recent production of A Life of Galileo is returning to the stage in 2014.  Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the Theatre Royal Bath are reviving the RSC production with Ian McDairmid remaining in the title role.  Opening in Birmingham on 28th February, the production will go on tour to Bath and Kingston during March.

Tour dates for A Life of Galileo:

Meanwhile, stage designer Tom Scutt has been talking about his work in two recent interviews here and here. Scutt, who also designed the set for Constellations, worked on A Life of Galileo for the RSC.

 

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National Theatre Includes Science Classics in 50th Anniversary Gala

Two science-in-theatre classics featured in the National Theatre’s 50th Anniversary evening of celebration on 2nd November. Scenes from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen were revived as part of the gala event broadcast live from the NT’s Olivier Theatre.

Actor Roger Allam, who presented Michael Frayn with a special Laurence Olivier Award in April this year, performed the speech from the close of Copenhagen in which Heisenberg recalls an encounter with an SS soldier in Bavaria at the end of the Second World War.

Rory Kinnear played pompous literary scholar Bernard Nightingale in an excerpt from Act II of Arcadia.

Both plays were first produced by the National Theatre. Arcadia opened in the  Lyttelton Theatre on 13th April 1993, directed Trevor Nunn with Bill Nighy in the role of Bernard. Copenhagen premiered in the Cottesloe Theatre in 1998, directed by Michael Blakemore.

A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle’s cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe.

Bernard Nightingale provokes Valentine. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Act II Scene 1

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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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Bletchley Park Gets the Theatrical Treatment in Edinburgh

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.

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Humble Boy Radio Play Repeated

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.