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Science On Stage 2007
Magic Theatre, in partnership the Exploratorium presents Science on Stage 2007. This unique program presents script-in-hand performances of new plays about science and technology. This season we will present three dramatic readings that explore topics ranging from continental drift to neuroscience to Galileo’s afterlife. And catch a glimpse of plays in the making. Each performance is followed by a discussion with the playwright, artistic staff, and a scientific expert.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 at 7pm
by Stephen R. Culp
directed by Jimmy Bohr
Scientists in Antarctica are converting into religious fanatics. A man searches for his sister in the seedy clubs of Istanbul. An anti-globalization activist is tortured in a dark CIA prison. The conspiracy, the mind control, the fate of mankind…it all drifts together like the continents. Can a 14-year old boy in California have the answers to everything?
Artist Bios
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 7pm
by David Ford
based on a story idea by Joan Mankin
directed by Mark Routhier
Joan was meant for a career in the study of the brain. But have the two strongest influences in her life – her wild, anachronistic, mind-expanding friend and her acclaimed neuroscientist godfather – prepared her for her godfather’s extremely difficult battle with brain cancer?
Artist Bios
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 7pm
by Ira Hauptman
directed by Barbara Oliver
In this comedy, Galileo is tried for heresy again – this time in the afterlife. Confronted by two Inquisition-era Cardinals, the great scientist is joined by two cloistered daughters and an opportunistic son who (for their two reasons) urge him to abandon his conviction that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Artist Bios
All performances at the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts (3601 Lyon St, SF). Admission is free to Magic subscribers and Exploratorium members, or with museum admission ($10 at the door).
Sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation – www.sloan.org
Part of the Martha Heasley Cox Raw Play Series
The Exploratorium – www.exploratorium.edu
Past Readings
Monday, April 16 at 6pm
KINGS PLAY CHESS ON FINE GREEN SATIN
by Michelle Carter
directed by Jonathan Moscone
What kind of child would your parents have designed? A math genius? An athlete? An eternal beauty? The people in this play have everything everyone has always wanted. What's the word for what you feel when there's nothing left to wish for?
Commissioned through the Magic Theatre / Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Initative
Monday, April 23 at 6pm
THE FLOWERS
by Adam Bock
directed by Kent Nicholson
a new play by the author of Five Flights and The Typographer's Dream. The Flowers is a biting look at aging, bad Shakespeare and backstage theatrics.
Commissioned by Encore Theatre Company through the Magic / Z Space New Works Initiative
Monday, April 30 at 6pm
WHO BY FIRE
by Ro'i Rashkes and Aaron Davidman
directed by Aaron Davidman
Israeli playwright Ro'i Rashkes and Traveling Jewish Theatre Artistic Director Aaron Davidman take a closer look at the Israel-Diaspora dialogue with this love story set in New York City on the eve of 9/11 and starring TJT company members Naomi Newman and Corey Fischer.
Thursday, September 14 at 7pm
BABY M
by Lauren Gunderson
directed by Mark Routhier
Chris is the prime suspect in the murder of his wife Mary, a talented particle physicist on the verge of a momentous and potentially dangerous discovery. In her quest to prove his innocence, his lawyer Madison finds Mary was pregnant with more than great ideas.
Thursday, September 21 at 7pm
THE STEM CELL RESEARCH PLAYS
by Jessica Fleitman, Clayton Hoff, Kristina Hontalas & Stacy Johnstone
advisor: playwright and professor Naomi Iizuka
directed by Evren Odcikin & Lauren Pizzi
Four short plays about the up-and-coming field of Stem Cell Research by up-and-coming student playwrights. These plays are the culmination of the playwrights' immersion in the topic and workshops from the UC Santa Barbara Summer Play Lab.
Thursday, September 28 at 7pm
THE RUBY VECTOR
by Karla Jennings
directed by Mark Routhier
What makes a man use his brilliance to create new methods of mass murder? The answer lies in a clash of wills between a bioweapons researcher and a former Soviet scientist, with thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
Monday, February 27, 2006 at 6pm
TEMPODYSSEY
by Dan Dietz, directed by Sean Daniels
Genny is efficient, professional, and anonymous — the perfect temp. There’s just one problem: she believes she’s the Goddess of Death. Will the first day of the worst job of her life push her over the edge?
Monday, March 6, 2006 at 6pm
AMERICAN KLEPTO
by Allison Moore, directed by Mark Routhier
Does finding a rare Anasazi gene strain in your DNA tests make you Native American? Not only does Gail think so, but she sues the Navajo Nation over land that she now claims is rightfully hers. She is the American Klepto, stealing the roots she's never had.
Monday, March 13, 2006 at 6pm
KILLING REAL ESTATE WOMEN
by Gary Bonasorte, directed by Evren Odcikin
A fabulous townhouse is on the market and the owners got a high-powered Washington real estate agent to get top dollar for it. That is until she decides to listen to her conscience and save a senator's career from certain doom.
Wednesday, September 28, 7pm
WALK INTO THE SEA by Elaine Romero, directed by Amy Glazer
Scientific Expert: David E. Presti, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
Wednesday, September 21, 7pm
‘BOT by C. Michéle Kaplan
Scientific Expert: Khalid M. Al-Ali, Director of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University (West Coast Campus)
Charlie, a brilliant 16-year-old boy, is recreating himself in Charliebot, an Artificial Intelligence program designed to grow and replicate without the help of its creator. Charlie’s parents are too busy with their own ultra-urban lives to realize what Charliebot’s success means for the future of their son.
Wednesday, September 14, 7pm
THE ICE-BREAKER by David Rambo, directed by by Art Manke
Scientific Expert: Slawek Tulaczyk, Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, UCSC
A young PhD student on the verge of a momentous discovery seeks an ally in a disgraced genius. Cold science gives way to warm emotion, leading them to reveal the passions and demons that drive their quests. The Ice-Breaker will receive a full production in February as part of the Magic’s 2005-06 Season.
Monday, March 21, 2005 at 7pm
THE NUTSHELL
by Trevor Allen, directed by Mark Routhier
expert: Dr. Barbara Hayes-Roth
A digital love story set against the green screen of a new world populated by animatronic, aphasiac teddy bears, computer animated avatar characters, motion-capture suits, and video Web bloggers.
Dr. Barbara Hayes-Roth is an expert in the field of Smart Interactive Characters from her work at Stanford and as CEO of Extempo. Barbara's work on Smart Interactive Characters concerns the development of software "minds" for virtual characters who have distinctly human qualities and capabilities, such as identity and personality, affect and empathy, knowledge and expertise, life story and evolving social relationships.
Monday, March 28, 2005 at 7pm
ANY NIGHT
by Daniel Arnold & Medina Hahn, directed by Jessica Heidt
expert: Lee Tien
Paranoia, surveillance, and a man in love. Any Night is a psychological thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat looking for the Peeping Tom of the Technology Age.
Lee Tien is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in free speech law, including intersections with intellectual property law and privacy law. Before joining EFF, Lee was a sole practitioner specializing in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. Mr. Tien has published articles on children's sexuality and information technology, anonymity, surveillance, and the First Amendment status of publishing computer software.
Monday, April 4, 2005 at 7pm
SEXSTING
by Doris Baizley in collaboration with Susan Raffanti, directed by Virginia Reed
expert: Susan Raffanti
Tastygirl, Cocovixen, 2young4u. Who's actually on the other side of a chat room ID? FBI exposes adults soliciting kids for sex online through covert "sting" operations. But how far can the FBI go before such behavior is considered entrapment?
Susan Raffanti collaborated with Doris Baizley on the development of Sexsting. Susan is a criminal defense lawyer in Oakland California. For the past 18 years she has been representing individuals charged with federal crimes such as fraud, theft of government property, illegal immigration, drug conspiracies, firearms offenses, bank robbery, and, most recently, internet crimes. She has acted as a federal sentencing consultant and has recently completed a term as a commissioner on Oakland’s Citizens’ Police Review Board.
Thursday, September 2, at 7 p.m.
THE SOUNDING
by Pamela Winfrey
directed by Mark Routhier
In the mid 19 th Century, laying the Trans-Atlantic cable between North America and Europe could change the rate at which information would be exchanged forever. The sheer scope of this endeavor, the huge amount of capital needed, and the clash of egos in the pure science of it, all weave together to create a compelling and moving drama.
 Pamela Winfrey has been a playwright and performance artist for the past twenty five years. Ms. Winfrey’s plays and performance pieces have been seen at New Dramatists (NYC), Lilleth Women's Theater, and Mill Valley Center for the Performing Arts, Co Lab, People's Theater, Padua Hills Playwright's Festival (LA), The Lab, the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, and the Cedar Rapids Children's Theater (Home of Play Time Poppy, Happy Little Ear of Corn) Since 1991, she has been writing the books and lyrics for Mobius Operandi, an electro-acoustic sound sculpture ensemble and performance group. She is also one of the founding members. With Mobius she has created five years of inter-disciplinary large-scale performance works, including Exit Vacaville which took over an entire building to rave reviews. She's been a member of Actor's Equity and the Dramatist's Guild and has worked at Magic Theatre, the Minneapolis Children's Theater and the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival. She has an undergraduate degree in Theatre and a Masters in Interdisciplinary Arts. In 2003, she received an Individual Artist award from the Marin Arts Council for her play, The Sounding. During Pamela Winfrey’s twenty five year tenure at the Exploratorium, a museum of science, art, and human perception, she has been the director of the performance program, the acting Director of the Arts, and is now a senior artist, a position that functions as part curator, part cultural elder, and part artist broker. Ms. Winfrey has written several articles for the Exploratorium Quarterly: on animal mimicry, a comparison study of spinning dancers and skaters, and on dolls as a reflection of culture.
Thursday, September 9, at 7 p.m.
THE MONKEY ROOM
By Kevin Fisher
Five chimps in an AIDS vaccine lab have not developed the disease despite being surrounded it – but why? Ava, the new head of the lab, must solve the mystery before all of her funding is cut off. This provocative and comic drama explores the risks some scientists take to find the latest cures, and the lengths all people go to fight for the lives and the ideas they believe in.
 Kevin Fisher's plays have been performed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Naked Angels, Adobe Theatre and Westbeth Theatre in New York. His screenplay Under My Skin won the 1995 Independent Feature Project screenwriting award. His comic monologues have been performed in comedy clubs, published by Smith & Kraus, printed as New York Times Op-Ed pieces, produced together as the show Legal Alien, and are currently being recorded for radio. Kevin has a Masters Degree in Epidemiology, and presented a paper on HIV diagnosis at the 2004 International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.
Thursday, September 16, at 7 p.m.
THE SEQUENCE
by Paul Mullin
Young science reporter Ruth has found the story of her career: a hotshot scientist challenges the government to see who can become the first to map the entire human genome. The face-off throws the genetic world into a tailspin, as Ruth struggles to capture the truth behind the hype of cutting edge genetics and its stunning impact on the world.
 Paul Mullin’s plays have been produced in cities across the United States including Washington DC, Louisville, Baltimore, New York, and Los Angeles. Louis Slotin Sonata, his play about a Los Alamos scientist who accidentally dosed himself with a critical amount of radiation, received the LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Play and went on to a successful off-Broadway production at Ensemble Studio Theatre. The play also received special invitation readings at both the Santa Barbara Nuclear Peace Foundation and the Los Alamos National Laboratories. More recently his The Good Ship Manhattan and An American Book of the — The Game Show premiered in Los Angeles. He also wrote and starred in the independent feature film Hitting The Ground, which won the Gold Prize at the Houston WorldFest and later played in rotation on the Sundance Channel. Paul currently lives in Seattle with his wife and son.
read
about our past readings here
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Loretta Greco, Artistic Director
