EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

Good Hair

written by Phaedra Michelle Scott

directed by Kimille Howard

featuring Arshia Panicker, Dolores Avery Pereira, Yvonne Jessica Pruitt, & Kedren Spencer

Told through three timelines, Good Hair tangles together the lives of women and the central question: Does the cost of beauty outweigh the proof of science?

Rachel E. Winfield, Stage Manager

This virtual reading will be held on the Zoom platform. You can make sure you have the latest version downloaded here.

Phaedra Michelle Scott is a playwright and dramaturg based in New York City. Her play, DIASPORA! was a commissioned work through SpeakEasy Stages’s The Boston Project. She is a past resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm for her play PLANTATION BLACK, and is currently a member of the OBIE award-winning playwriting ensemble, Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and Pipeline Theater Company’s PlayLab. Currently, she is developing her newest play GOOD HAIR, recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant.  She has been an arts and culture journalist for wbur, Boston’s NPR station; a content developer at the USS Constitution Museum where she made maritime history accessible through storytelling and media. She is the resident dramaturg of New Harmony Project. Scott has received a Bly Creative Capacity Grant for her work as dramaturg for Black Theater Commons as well as the recipient of the Frederick Douglass Fellowship for her research on August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle. She is a crocheter, horror fan and obscure history enthusiast. She/Her/Hers. www.phaedrascott.com 

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

Good Hair is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists, American Guild of Variety Artists, and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the artists to appear on this program.

EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

Las Borinqueñas

written by Nelson Diaz-Marcano

directed by Rebecca Aparicio

featuring Ashley Alvarez, Jeff Biehl*, David Davila, Yohanna Florentino, Maricelis Galanes, Maribel Martinez, Ashley Marie Ortiz, Camilla Perez Santiago, Juan Francisco Villa, & Brenda Withers

This is the story of the first birth control pill mass trial and the Puerto Rican women that served as tribute for the miracle to occur.

Xavier Khan, Stage Manager

This reading is closed to the public.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano is a Puerto Rican NYC-based theater maker, activist, and community leader whose mission is to create work that challenges and builds community. His plays have been developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, Vision Latino Theater Company, Milagro Theatre, The William Inge Theatre Festival, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and The Parsnip Ship, among others. He currently serves as the Literary Manager for the Latinx Playwright Circle and as the Community Outreach Coordinator for Atlantic Theater Company, as well as being a member of the Clubbed Thumb writer’s group. Recent credits include The Diplomats (Random Acts Chicago), Paper Towels (INTAR), Misfit, America (Hunter Theatre Company), I Saw Jesus in Toa Baja (Conch Shell Productions), and World Classic (Jayuya Theatre).

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

Las Borinqueñas is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

The Reservoir

written by Jake Brasch

directed by Dara Malina*

featuring AJ Clauss, Gilbert Cruz*, Michael Cullen*, Dawn Evans*, Susan Shaloub Larkin, Yaron Lotan, Carolyn Mignini*, & Martin Shakar*

A lost, queer, neurotic mess of a twenty-something moves home to get sober. Struggling with memory loss, he finds unlikely allies in his four unpredictable grandparents.

Traci Bargen, Stage Manager

This virtual reading will be held on the Zoom platform. You can make sure you have the latest version downloaded here.

* indicates EST Member Artist

Jake Brasch is a playwright + lyricist + composer + pianist + performer + clown + baker and a fancy-free queer sober Jew from Colorado. Proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, The Farm Theater’s Development Workshop, and the LAByrinth 2020 Intensive Ensemble. Jake has worked at The New Ohio, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Denver Center Theatre Company, The Farm Theater, Eden Theatre Company,  LAByrinth Theatre Company, The Tank, Dixon Place, Curious Theatre Company, DSA at the Edinburgh Fringe, The 14th St Y, Planet Connections, and NYU-Tisch. Currently under commission from the EST/Sloan Project and The Farm Theater. Jake has written music for several films, plays, and podcasts. BFA: NYU-Tisch, Experimental Theatre Wing/New Studio on Broadway. forever seeking the sunlight of the spirit. 

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

The Reservoir is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists, American Guild of Variety Artists, and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the artists to appear on this program.

EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

Beyond Words

written by Laura Maria Censabella*

Directed by Melissa Crespo

featuring Michael Frederic, David Greenspan, Alex Herrald*, Antwayn Hopper, Wonjung Kim, Antoinette LaVecchia, & Nancy Rodriguez

Beyond Words dramatizes the mysterious relationship between human beings and birds through a 30-year groundbreaking experiment that captures our longing to communicate with animals.

Sarah Gwynne Walker, Stage Manager

This reading is closed to the public.

* indicates EST Member Artist

Laura Maria Censabella’s play Paradise (IRNE Award Best New Play, Elliott Norton Nomination Outstanding New Script, Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Science Foundation Commission) recently made its sold-out U.S. west coast premiere in L.A. at The Odyssey Theatre (Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, producers) and premiered on the east coast at Underground Railroad/Central Square Theater in Cambridge. She then wrote the screenplay for Vicangelo Films and JuVee Productions. Ms. Censabella is the recipient of the $10,000 William Saroyan Human Rights Award for her play Carla Cooks The War, three grants in Playwriting and Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and two Daytime Emmy Awards. Other plays and musicals have been developed or produced at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, the Women’s Project and Productions, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Portland Stage, the New Harmony Project, Gulfshore Playhouse, The Working Theatre, Luna Stage, Passage Theatre, and Urban Stages, among others. She directs the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Playwrights Unit and teaches at the New School for Drama where she received the Distinguished University-Wide Teaching Award. She is a graduate of Yale--Wole Soyinka, Nikos Psacharopoulos, Michael Roemer, Anthony Davis, and Henry Louis Gates were some of her teachers--and is a proud member of HONOR ROLL! an action and advocacy group of women+ playwrights over 40.

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

Beyond Words is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

Lemuria

written by Bonnie Antosh

directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh*

featuring Smith Alfieri, Timothy Bright, Ceci Fernández, Maya Jackson, Irene Sofia Lucio, Paola Sanchez Abreu, & Nance Williamson

In the animal kingdom and in our own, how does a queen pass the crown to another queen? LEMURIA is queer King Lear in a North Carolina lemur lab.

Ingrid Pierson, Stage Manager

This virtual reading will be held on the Zoom platform. You can make sure you have the latest version downloaded here.

* indicates EST Member Artist

Bonnie Antosh is a playwright and performer from both Carolinas & New York. Her plays include CLUCK DELUXE (winner, 2019 Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival), PERSEPHONE AT THE RIVER (finalist, 2019 Red Bull Short New Play Festival), RARE (Yale Playwrights Festival), THE WILDERNESS NEEDS YOUR WHOLE ATTENTION (Rule of 7x7), and I TOLD YOU IT WOULD END LIKE THIS (co-written with Avery Deutsch). She studied theater at Yale, where she received both the Louis Sudler Prize and the Shana Alexander Research Fellowship in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work as an actress includes seasons with Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare on the Sound, and Nebraska Shakespeare. Bonnie is a '20-'21 EST/Sloan commission recipient and the Literary Manager of Playing on Air, a podcast and public radio show devoted to contemporary short plays. She currently writes and lives in Asheville, NC. BonnieAAntosh.com

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

Lemuria is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists, American Guild of Variety Artists, and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the artists to appear on this program.

EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

Smart

written by Mary Elizabeth Hamilton

directed by Matt Dickson*

featuring Christine Farrell*, Layla Khoshnoudi, & Tiffany Villarin

When called to fix a virtual home assistant, a tech support worker becomes infatuated with her client. Smart examines the real life implications of our virtual interactions.

Fran Acuña-Almiron, Stage Manager

This virtual reading will be held on the Zoom platform. You can make sure you have the latest version downloaded here.

* indicates EST Member Artist

Mary Elizabeth Hamilton was a Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow at The Juilliard School and a Jerome New York Fellow at The Lark. She has participated in The O’Neill Theater Conference, EST/Youngblood, I-73, New Georges’ The Jam, and Play Penn. Mary holds her MFA in playwriting from The University of Iowa. Her play 16 Winters won the American Shakespeare Center’s New Contemporaries Award. She has developed work with Clubbed Thumb, Rattlestick, Studio Theater, EST, and Page 73. She was a Story Editor on the television show "Why Women Kill" and is developing a tv pilot with AMC. Mary is a resident playwright with New Dramatist and lives in Brooklyn with her daughter.   

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

Smart is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists, American Guild of Variety Artists, and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the artists to appear on this program.

EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

Henry Makes a Bible

written by AJ Clauss

directed by Lilli Hokama

featuring Mehry Iris Eslaminia, Rebecca Harris, Kurt Hellerich, Paul Pontrelli, Amber Quick, & Kelsey Rainwater

The creation story of the world's most famous medical textbook created by two college students in 1850, Henry and Henry. A story of gentle eyes and cold bones.

Hadley Todoran, Stage Manager

This virtual reading will be held on the Zoom platform. You can make sure you have the latest version downloaded here.

AJ Clauss is a playwright and performer forged from mountain dew and the cornfields of Indiana, currently living in NYC. AJ is a member of Youngblood, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s OBIE award-winning playwright collective. Recently AJ's plays have been seen in Seattle (React Theatre at 12th Ave Arts), Baltimore (Trupenny Collective at The Mercury Theatre), and will soon present a new queer play to their small-town in Indiana, thanks to a grant from the Indiana Arts Council and Arts Midwest (some day). Plays include When You Were Small, Close Your Eyes and Sleep, and Salty. BFA: University of Evansville. Light seeks light.

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

Henry Makes a Bible is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists, American Guild of Variety Artists, and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the artists to appear on this program.

EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of

Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays

written by Amanda Quaid

directed by Colette Robert*

featuring Francesca Faridany, Christopher Innvar, Elise Kibler, Emma Kikue, Steven Rattazzi, & David Shih

A story about amateur scientist Eunice Foote, one big discovery, scientific legacy, and ever-rising levels of carbon dioxide.

Xavier Khan, Stage Manager

This virtual reading will be held on the Zoom platform. You can make sure you have the latest version downloaded here.

* indicates EST Member Artist

Amanda Quaid’s plays include The Clam (Playing on Air, a winner of the 2019 James Stevenson Prize), The Extinctionist (EST Marathon of One-Act Plays), and Echo and Narcissus (Red Bull Short New Play Festival). Libretto: The Extinctionist (upcoming at Heartbeat Opera). Screenplay: English. Other works have been read and developed by Colt Coeur, Culture Project, HB Playwrights, and the National Arts Club. Amanda also directed and animated an award-winning stop-motion short film called Toys, which was screened across North America as part of LUNAFEST.

Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!

Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.

Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists, American Guild of Variety Artists, and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the artists to appear on this program.

join us Monday, November 30 at 7pm EST for our annual

EST/Sloan Project Artist Cultivation Event

A free-wheeling, far-ranging discussion between scientists and playwrights about science, story-telling, and what makes plays work. Our annual EST/Sloan Project Artist Cultivation Event is a great opportunity for any playwright interested in developing a play about science & technology.

This year's panelists include Jad Abumrad (founder/co-host of RadioLab), Carla Ching (Fast Company, 2014 EST/Sloan mainstage), Danielle N. Lee (biology professor & science blogger), Brian Nord (FermiLab researcher & astrophysicist), & Charly Evon Simpson (Behind the Sheet, 2019 EST/Sloan mainstage).  The panel will be moderated by Naomi Lorrain (Behind the Sheet actor & Schoenberg Center researcher).

Applications for this year’s EST/Sloan commissions are currently open. Those who attend the virtual panel will receive an extended deadline of January 1, 2021.

This virtual event will be held on the Zoom platform and is free to attend, though registration is required.. Once registered, you will receive the event access link in your confirmation email - be sure and hold onto it!

This Year’s Panelists:

Jad Abumrad is the host and creator of Radiolab, a public radio program broadcast on nearly 600 stations and downloaded more than 12 million times a month as a podcast. He employs his dual backgrounds as composer and journalist to create what’s been called “a new aesthetic” in broadcast journalism. He orchestrates dialogue, music, interviews, and sounds into compelling documentaries that draw listeners into investigations of otherwise intimidating topics, such as the nature of numbers, the evolution of altruism, or the legal foundation for the war on terror. Abumrad has won three George Foster Peabody Awards, and in 2011, he was honored as a MacArthur Fellow. He also created and hosted three seasons of More Perfect, a series about untold stories of the Supreme Court, which The New York Times called “. . . possibly the most mesmerizing podcast.” And in 2019, he created Dolly Parton’s America, a Peabody Award-winning nine-part series that explores a divided America through the life and music of one of its greatest icons.

Carla Ching wrote Fast Company as an EST/Sloan commission which got produced in 2014 at EST as well as at South Coast Rep, and in Seattle and Minneapolis. Her other plays include Nomad Motel and The Two Kids That Blow Shit Up. She’s also written on television on Fear the Walking Dead, I Love Dick, The First, Preacher and Home Before Dark.

Danielle N. Lee is an assistant professor of biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and is best known for her science blogging and outreach efforts focused on increasing minority participation in STEM fields. Her research interests focus on the connections between ecology and evolution and their contribution to animal behavior. In 2017, Lee was selected as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer which led her to travel to Tanzania to research the behavior and biology of landmine-sniffing African giant pouched rats. Her 2019 TEDTalk “How hip-hop helps us understand science” has received more than two million views. 

Brian Nord’s interests revolve around exploring the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) in scientific contexts and developing new methods for people to learn and do research. Brian's current research is in applying AI to data taken from big cosmic experiments, like the Dark Energy Survey. Recently, he's started to investigate methods for automating experiments --- think self-driving telescopes. Brian is also working on building better research communities: in 2017, Nord co-founded the the Deep Skies Lab — an inter-institutional collaboration of deep learning experts and astrophysicists. Brian has a long history of public engagement in science, including collaborations with artists and educators. He currently leads the KICP Space Explorers program, working with Chicago high school students. Nord is co-creator of ThisIsBlackLight.com, an online curriculum to teach about Black experiences in America. He helped start the Academic Strike4BlackLives in 2020, and co-authored the Change Now calls to action for a better physics research community. He is a Scientist in Fermilab's AI Project Office and Cosmic Physics Center. He is also a CASE Scientist in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and a Senior Member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago.

Charly Evon Simpson is a playwright, teacher, and TV writer based in Brooklyn. Her plays include Behind the Sheet, Jump, form of a girl unknown, it’s not a trip it’s a journey, and more. Her work has been seen and/or developed with Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Lark, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Chautauqua Theater Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, The Fire This Time Festival, and others. She has received the Vineyard Theatre's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Dramatists Guild's Lanford Wilson Award and has commissions from theaters including MTC/Sloan, Cleveland Play House, The New Group, and South Coast Repertory. She’s a core writer at the Playwrights' Center, a member of New Georges Jam, and in the incoming class of resident playwrights at New Dramatists. Charly has worked on TV shows for Showtime and HBO and has taught playwriting at Hunter College, SUNY Purchase, and the National Theatre Institute. BA: Brown University. MSt: University of Oxford, New College. MFA: Hunter College. www.charlyevonsimpson.com

This Year’s Moderator:

Naomi Lorrain is a NYC based actor/playwright. She holds both a B.A. in the History of Science, History of Medicine and a B.A. in African American Studies from Yale University as well as an MFA in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is an AUDELCO Awards nominee and a NY Innovative Theatre Awards nominee for Best Lead Actress for Behind the Sheet and Entangled, respectively. Theater: Behind the Sheet (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Entangled (The Amoralist), What to Send Up When It Goes Down (Movement Theatre Company, Drama Desk Nomination - Unique Theatrical Experience), Song for a Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival). TV: “Orange is the New Black” (Netflix), “Elementary” (CBS), “The Good Fight” (CBS), “Madam Secretary” (CBS). Plays: The Lost Ones (NYU Tisch Grad Acting), A Trojan Woman’s Tale, The Big O (Villa La Pietra), Rigor Mortis (NYU Freeplay Festival), #shelfies (52nd Street Project), The Queen of Macon County (HomeBase Theatre Collective).

Photo Credits: Lizzie Johnston (Jad Abumrad); Elisabeth Caren (Carla Ching); Alecia Hoyt Photography (Danielle N. Lee); Reidar Hahn, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Brian Nord); JMA Photography (Charly Evon Simpson); Stan Demidoff (Naomi Lorrain)