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.
Dramatic Reading of Copenhagen in Abingdon
Members of Abingdon’s Studio Theatre Club will be giving a reading of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen as part of ScienceOxfordLive on 13th March. The event in the Amey Theatre at Abingdon School will be introduced by Prof. Frank Close and apparently will also feature live ‘hands-on particle physics demonstrations.’
Tickets for the dramatic reading at 7.30pm on Wednesday 13th March cost £5.
Doing the Maths – Three New Productions of David Auburn’s Proof
David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning play Proof depicts the relationship between a mathematics professor, his daughter and a PhD student. In the coming weeks a new production opens in London and two productions will be staged in the USA, making March 2013 the month to catch Proof on stage.
Previews of the Menier Chocolate Factory theatre’s production of Proof begin in London on the 14 March 2013, where it runs until the 27 April. Director Polly Findlay was recently profiled in the Evening Standard.
Proof is set in the Hyde Park area of Chicago, which also happens to be where the Court Theatre will be staging the play between 7th March and 7th April 2013, directed by Charles Newell. The Peter’s Alley Theatre Company will also be performing Proof between 15th and 30th March at the Theatre on the Run in Arlington, Virginia, USA.
Performance of Dava Sobel’s Copernicus Play in US Virgin Islands
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.
‘Constellations’ and ‘The Effect’ Receive Multiple Award Nominations
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 Altruists’: A New Play in Development by Menagerie Theatre Company
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.
Two Performances of ‘Mr Darwin’s Tree’ in Oxford
The touring production of ‘Mr Darwin’s Tree’ by Murray Watts is being performed in Oxford later this week. Andrew Harrison, who plays Charles Darwin in this one-man show, gave a very strong performance when StageScite saw the production at the Kings Head Theatre last year. The play gives a moving account of Darwin’s family relationships, his personal struggles and his work.
‘Mr Darwin’s Tree’ is being performed at St. Andrews Church in Oxford on Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd February 2013 at 7.30pm.
Tom Stoppard Celebrated in the States
A new production of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Arcadia’ is underway in Indiana, USA – a few weeks before the Writers Guild of America plans to honour the playwright for his contributions to screenwriting.
The Civic Theatre of Greater Lafayette’s production of ‘Arcadia’ is playing on Fridays and Saturdays until 2nd February. The town of Lafayette is about 100 miles southeast of Chicago.
Set across two centuries and encompassing mathematics, chaos theory, poetry and landscape gardening, Stoppard’s 1993 play is one of the classics of the science in theatre genre. The director of the Lafayette production, Rachel Lambert, describes ‘Arcadia’ further in this short video on the theatre’s website.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyCzrrNJeOw&w=560&h=315]
On the 17th February in Los Angeles Sir Tom Stoppard will receive the Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America for his contributions to screenwriting. Stoppard’s prolific film writing credits include ‘Shakespeare in Love’ with Marc Norman (1993) and the 2012 film adaption of Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’.
‘The Effect’ Wins Best New Play Award
‘The Effect’, the new play by Lucy Prebble has won ‘Best New Play’ in the Critic’s Circle Theatre Awards at a lunchtime ceremony on 15th January. The sell-out National Theatre/Headlong production opened in November 2012 to very positive reviews in the UK press.
The play is set in a clinical trials facility and follows the relationship between two trial participants Connie (played by Billie Piper) and Tristan (Jonjo O’Neill). A short video including brief comments from Lucy Prebble about an early read-through has recently been posted on the production website.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcfBaylRHDQ?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
‘The Effect’ runs at the National’s Cottesloe Theatre until 23 February 2013 – although only day tickets and returns are available.
‘The Physicists’ on BBC Radio 3
Just one week on from airing Michael Frayn’s ‘Copenhagen’, Radio 3 will be broadcasting another play featuring physicists – and this time they’re mad. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s ‘The Physicists’ was first staged in 1962 and was revived at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2012 to rather mixed reviews. Set in a lunatic asylum, ‘The Physicists’ is less intellectually demanding than ‘Copenhagen’ but the two plays are linked by the sense of a possible nuclear threat. The new BBC Radio 3 version will feature actors Samantha Bond and Geoffrey Whitehead and goes out at 8.30pm on Sunday 20th January 2013.