From left, Shree Bose, Billy Carden, Carla Ching, Karine Gibbs, Stuart Firestein
Playwrights! Join us on Monday, December 5, 2022, at 8:00 PM for the 2022 Virtual EST/Sloan Artist Cultivation Event, the annual far-ranging and free-wheeling discussion among scientists and playwrights about science, story-telling, and what makes plays work. This year’s event will be online and is free for any playwright interested in developing a play about science or technology. Registration is required. Once registered, you will receive the event access link in your confirmation email. You can register here.
WHAT MAKES A GREAT PLAY ABOUT SCIENCE?
“To stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.”—this has been the mission of The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project (EST/Sloan Project, for short) for the past 23 years. Over that time the EST/Sloan Project has awarded more than $3 million in grants to some 300 playwrights and theatre companies. More than 150 productions of EST/Sloan-developed plays have been mounted nationwide.
Applications for this year’s EST/Sloan commissions are currently open and will be accepted through January 15, 2023. You can view previous commission recipients on the EST/Sloan webpage.
Two related events culminate each EST/Sloan season:
1) The First Light Festival is a month-long series of readings and workshops that showcase plays in development, and
2) a full mainstage production of at least one work. Recent mainstage productions have included what you are now (2022) by Sam Chanse about memory and trauma, Behind the Sheet (2019) by Charly Evon Simpson about how American gynecology began with experiments on slaves (a NY Times Critic’s Pick), BUMP by Chiara Atik (2018) on pregnancy and childbirth, SPILL (2017) by Leigh Fondakowski on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Boy (2016) by Anna Ziegler on sexual identity, Please Continue (2016) by Frank Basloe on Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments, Informed Consent (2015) by Deborah Zoe Laufer on scientific research and Alzheimer’s, Fast Company (2014) by Carla Ching on game theory and confidence games, Isaac’s Eye (2013) by Lucas Hnath on scientific method and rivalry, and Headstrong (2012) by Patrick Link on sports and concussions.
This year's Artist Cultivation Event panelists include
Shree Bose
Shree Bose is currently completing her MD at Duke University School of Medicine. At 17 years old, Shree triumphed over 10,000 competitors to become the Grand Prize Winner of the first-ever Google Global Science Fair in 2011. For her winning research, Shree worked to understand how ovarian cancer cells develop resistance to a chemotherapy drug called cisplatin. She presented this work to President Obama and directors of the National Institutes of Health, as well as students around the world. Through these experiences, Shree also became a passionate advocate for better STEM education, which led her to co-found Piper Learning, Inc., a company creating educational toys for kids for which she currently serves co-CEO. After graduating Harvard University in 2016, she joined the MD/PhD program at Duke University School of Medicine, where she recently completed her PhD on understanding metabolic changes in ovarian cancer metastasis. She will be completing her MD in May 2023.
William “Billy” Carden (Photo: Marc J. Franklin)
William “Billy” Carden served as Artistic Director of the Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) for 15 years (2007-2022). In 2015 EST was given a Special Drama Desk Award for its unwavering commitment to developing new American plays. At EST he directed productions of Against the Hillside by Sylvia Khoury The Good Muslim by Zakiyyah Alexander, Pidgeon, PTSD and Zero by Tommy Smith and four EST/Sloan productions: Please Continue by Frank Basloe, Headstrong by Patrick Link, Lenin’s Embalmers by Vern Thiessen, and Lucy by Damien Atkins. He was artistic director of the HB Playwrights Foundation for eleven years where he directed the Off-Broadway productions of Mrs. Klein and Collected Stories starring Uta Hagen. His many other productions there include Horton Foote’s The Habitation of Dragons, Burnt Piano by Justin Fleming and Voir Dire by Joe Sutton. He directed The Dew Point at Summer Play Festival, The Young Girl and the Monsoon at Playwrights Horizons, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Stratford Festival in Canada. As an actor he played leading roles Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Circle Rep, WPA, and EST and also worked at numerous regional theatres including Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Huntington, Humana Festival, and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. On Broadway, he created the title role in the original, award-winning production of Short Eyes by Miguel Piñero. He teaches in the acting and playwriting programs at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Carla Ching
Carla Ching wrote Fast Company as an EST/Sloan commission. It received its New York City premiere in 2014 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and its World Premiere in 2013 at South Coast Rep. The play has also been published by Samuel French. Her other plays include Revenge Porn or the Story of a Body, Nomad Motel, Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness, and The Two Kids That Blow Shit Up. She is a founding member of The Kilroys, a member of New Dramatists, and former Artistic Director of 2g. She was among the first three recipients of the Los Angeles New Play Project Award in 2021. Carla was also a co-recipient of the 2021 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild. Her television credits include Fear the Walking Dead, I Love Dick, The First, Preacher, Home Before Dark, and the forthcoming Mr. + Mrs. Smith.
Karine Gibbs (Photo: Adam Sings in the Timber)
Karine Gibbs is a Jamaican American microbiologist and immunologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Gibbs’ research merges the fields of sociomicrobiology and bacterial cell biology to explore how the bacterial pathogen Proteus mirabilis, a common gut bacterium which can become pathogenic and cause urinary tract infections, identifies self versus non-self. In 2013, Gibbs and her team were the first to sequence the genome of P. mirabilis BB2000, the model organism for studying self-recognition. In graduate school at Stanford University, Gibbs helped to pioneer the design of a novel tool that allowed for the visualization of the movement of bacterial membrane proteins in real time. In 2020, Gibbs was recognized by Cell Press as one of the top 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America.
This year’s moderator
Stuart Firestein
Stuart Firestein is the former Chair of Columbia University's Department of Biological Sciences where his laboratory studies the vertebrate olfactory system, possibly the best chemical detector on the face of the planet. Aside from its molecular detection capabilities, the olfactory system serves as a model for investigating general principles and mechanisms of signaling and perception in the brain. His laboratory seeks to answer that fundamental human question: How do I smell? Dedicated to promoting the accessibility of science to a public audience, Firestein serves as an advisor for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program for the Public Understanding of Science. He is the author of Failure: Why Science Is So Successful (2015) and Ignorance: How It Drives Science (2012).
