Thandiwe Mawungwa on contemporary Zimbabwe, culture clashes, playwriting, and HOW POWER FLOWS

Thandiwe Mawungwa

How do you introduce new technology to a village community where nothing can be done unless you consult with and get the approval of the village ancestors? In HOW POWER FLOWS, the compelling new play by Thandiwe Mawungwa, the idealistic civil engineers confront exactly this problem as they try to bring running water to a remote village in Zimbabwe.  

HOW POWER FLOWS will have its first public reading at 3:00 PM on October 24 at the Ensemble Studio Theater as part of the Fall 2024 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free and reservations are encouraged.

Thandiwe kindly found time this week to answer all our questions about her new play.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

How did HOW POWER FLOWS come to be?

My husband and I travel a lot to remote villages filming documentaries for humanitarian organizations. During our travels, I noticed there was one problem that was consistent among the villages – the clash between development and African traditional religion. When I saw the call for plays for the EST/Sloan Project, I thought that would be the perfect platform to write and develop the play that had been circling in my head for many years. The deadline also added the much-needed discipline to write and finish it!

Tell us about your journey from Zimbabwe to the U.S.

My journey from Zimbabwe to the U.S has been an adventurous one and began in 2019 when my play 33 Cents was chosen to be part of the Ojai Playwrights Festival in California. The following year, I returned to the United States for a film festival, which never happened because of COVID and we ended up being stuck in the U.S. for one and a half years. It was actually during this period that I applied for the EST/Sloan grant. Now, four years later, I am here again – with two films having been screened at the 33 and Me Film Festival in Pennsylvania as well HOW POWER FLOWS seeing its “First Light” at EST.

Have you ever visited or lived in villages in Zimbabwe like the one in the play? How did that inform the play?

Growing up we used to go to the village during school holidays and even as a young child, I could feel the tension between science and African traditional religion. My filming work takes me to many villages. These experiences played a major role in how I created my characters and their reactions.

Parts of the story are based on my own experiences in various villages. For example, when Henrietta is fined by the Chief for wearing trousers, that actually happened to me! However, in my case, I was wearing a skirt on top of the trousers but they saw the trousers around my ankles so I got into trouble! 

Why this play? Why now?

I have seen many talented, enthusiastic and hardworking young people leaving Zimbabwe because they were blocked from achieving their goals. The brain drain is real. I think it is time to address how corruption and our spiritual beliefs have played a major role in that. We need to find a way to respect our cultures and customs but not at the cost of development.

What do you want the audience to take away from HOW POWER FLOWS?

I want the audience to not only get an insight into some of the challenges we face in Zimbabwe, but for them to also understand that there are many nuances and complexities involved in trying to help a community. It’s not just about bringing development but about respecting and understanding the people you want to help.

Is the play set in contemporary Zimbabwe? Is the current political climate there as repressive – with frequent arbitrary arrests – as depicted in the play?

Yes, the play is set in contemporary Zimbabwe. Arrests happen there but are not arbitrary. You only get arrested if the government sees you as a threat – which is sometimes synonymous with trying to improve people’s standard of living. I, however, feel very strongly the need to mention that Zimbabwe is a very safe and peaceful country despite the political challenges we sometimes face. Everyone should definitely come and visit one day!

Are there still spiritual mediums in villages in Zimbabwe today who have as much influence over communal decision making as the medium depicted in the play?

Oh yes, definitely!

When did you know you were a playwright?

This may sound like a cliche but I started writing stories as soon as I could hold a pen. I became a playwright when I watched a terrible play in university and decided to write another play on the same subject but even better. I called that play A Banquet of Sorts and it played to three full houses!

What playwrights have influenced you the most?

Lyn Nottage, August Wilson and Lorraine Hansberry. The Zimbabwean playwright who influenced me the most was Aaron Chiundura Moyo. We studied his books in school. Another notable writer who has influenced me is Ngugi Wa Thiong'o.

You may be best known for producing the 2017 Zimbabwe thriller Mind Games, which has won several awards including Best Zimbabwean Film at the Zimbabwe International Film Festival in 2017. That movie has quite a different vibe from HOW POWER FLOWS and your other plays which all seem to have a social justice component. Do you see theater as inherently better at accomplishing some things than movies? Any plans to write more thrillers?

Mind Games also has a social justice component just packaged differently from HOW POWER FLOWS. Theater is definitely better at accomplishing certain things than movies. The creativity in theater is endless while creativity in movies is usually limited by the budget. For example, in theater you can put a chair on stage and say this is now an airplane, but in movies you have to show the plane.

What's next for Thandiwe Mawungwa?

More writing! My husband and I are currently co-writing a feature film called Shanduko. I am also in the process of writing my next full-length play which is about social justice – but now focusing on the hypocrisy I see in the world. Interesting times!

HOW POWER FLOWS is one of three readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in the Fall 2024 First Light Festival, which runs from October 24 through December 12. The festival is made possible through the alliance between the Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.   

Meghan Brown on sibling rivalry, quantum physics, hard-to-shake stories, and BIGFOOT

Meghan Brown

When do harmless ideas become dangerous? How do members of the same family develop radically different belief systems? How enduring are family bonds? Meghan Brown explores these questions and more in BIGFOOT, her edgy family comedy in which disgraced physicist Holly tries to persuade her Bigfoot conspiracy theorist sister Alyssa to return from the wilds of Oregon for a family Thanksgiving before their mother dies. A darkly funny high-stakes suspense play about sibling rivalry and the power of a good story.

BIGFOOT had its first public reading on June 17 at the Ensemble Studio Theater as part of the 2024 EST/Sloan First Light Festival.

Taking time out from her many new projects, Meghan kindly talked with us about her new play.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

What inspired you to write BIGFOOT?

In light of the increasing visibility of anti-science thinking during the COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to explore the ways in which seemingly harmless ideas (like believing in Bigfoot) become dangerous. 

I was also really interested in exploring a family dynamic where two sisters had diametrically opposed views on science, and imagining a set of circumstances where they were able to connect with each other in a way that made change possible. 

The two sisters in the play have a lot of issues with each other and have developed dramatically different worldviews: one is a physicist; the other is extremely skeptical of science. Do you think family dynamics can determine a person’s worldview?

I think that human beings are at the mercy of stories, and that many of the most foundational, hard-to-shake stories about identity often crystallize within families. We all see the world through a very particular lens — and that filter is shaped significantly (though not necessarily permanently!) by childhood experiences and dynamics. 

Frame 352 of the 1967 Patterson–Gimlin film, alleged by the filmmakers to depict a female Bigfoot.

Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin / Public Domain

Holly, the physicist in the play, talks about some of the more puzzling theories in physics: quantum superposition, quantum entanglement, and dark matter. Is the play contending that some of the tenets in physics require a belief system similar to what a conspiracy theorist buys into?

Definitely not! There’s a big difference between believing in Bigfoot and believing in quantum physics — but one of my main interests in telling this story was trying to really highlight what that difference actually is. In BIGFOOT, Alyssa points out that Bigfoot is just a “weird animal,” not an “all-knowing bilocating electron or whatever” — I wanted to explore the idea that depending on your background, believing in something like Bigfoot might feel much more comfortable than “believing” in a scientific paradox you haven’t been given the opportunity to truly understand. 

What would you like audiences to take away from seeing BIGFOOT?

That you can change your story. You can change your mind. You can learn new things and gather new evidence and release outdated beliefs and come to new, more evolved conclusions. And you can do this without being “incapacitated by shame.” It’s OK to have been wrong!

Have you had any personal relationship to physics?

I’m married to a quantum physicist, which has resulted in a much more personal relationship to physics than I ever would have predicted. Physics is mysterious and fascinating, and it has been a real privilege to get some small level of insight into how the world works on an atomic level. 

Plays about sisters are always so rich with history and feeling. What are your favorite plays about sisters?

The first two that come to mind are Jiehae Park’s Peerless and Jen Silverman’s The Moors. (Both happen to have productions in July 2024!)

What’s next for Meghan Brown?

I’m currently working on a physics-related spy romcom screenplay called Superposition, and was one of the co-writers on a comedy thriller film for Buzzfeed/Lionsgate called F*** Marry Kill that shot last summer and will be released soon. In terms of theater, I’m currently collaborating on a few new musical projects and continuing work on my astronaut murder mystery play A Seam (developed at the Geffen Playhouse Writers Room) and the Much Ado About Nothing riff/sex tragicomedy What Happened While Hero Was Dead (developed at Moving Arts’ MADlab, the Great Plains Theater Conference, and the Ashland New Plays Festival). I’ve also got a production of my play The Pliant Girls opening in DC this fall! 

BIGFOOT was one of six readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in the 2024 First Light Festival, which ran from April 25 through June 17. The festival is made possible through the alliance between the Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.   

Karina Billini on BBLs, body dysmorphia, social influencers, and APPLE BOTTOM

Karina Billini

When beauty standards change, who benefits and who is harmed? Who has the most influence over how we feel about our bodies? Celebrities? Social influencers? Our friends and loved ones? And who can explain the 650% surge in Brazilian Butt Lift surgery in the past ten years? In her riveting new play, APPLE BOTTOM, Karina Billini takes us inside a Miami salon that treats women recovering from BBLs. What unfolds is an intimate examination of female-to-female caregiving, body dysmorphia, and unsettling transformations cosmetic and otherwise. 

APPLE BOTTOM will have its first public reading this Thursday, June 13 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theater as part of the 2024 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free and reservations are encouraged.

Between rehearsals and rewrites, Karina somehow found time to share her thoughts about the play.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Tell us how APPLE BOTTOM came to be?

It was Fall 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and I had just finished writing a mini one-act Sloan play about the practice of holistic medicine in Dominican botanicas for EST as a Youngblood member (“She Comes from the Dirt”). I really appreciated how it just broadened my artistic lens and voice. So, I wanted to go after the large Sloan commission. I remember watching Linsay on a panel giving advice on how to pitch a successful Sloan play. She said to root the science in your truth. So what was my truth? At the time, Kim Kardashian and her sisters were really blowing up in popularity for their new large buttocks and wide hips that POC women in my community and family had been ostracized their whole lives for.

Kim Kardashian in 2014 Photo: Eva Rinaldi CCA 2.0

While the Kardashians were being celebrated for their new shapely figures, curvaceous women of color continued to be bullied. Why? Two things: 1) society’s long-standing racist beauty ideals where black/brown bodies have been marked as “excessive” against a white/middle-class construct and 2) the Kardashians had learned to “whiten” the curvy POC body frame by perfecting the “slim thick” frame: keep the wide hips and large buttocks of POC women, but still be thin…and white. I was infuriated at how the Kardashians were commodifying the brown/black femme body.

Meanwhile, I was seeing on the news how brown and black women were dying at an alarming rate from getting a BBL. At the time, brown and black women were taking advantage of the cheap pandemic flights and remote work to get plastic surgery, specifically BBLs, done. Most of these POC women already had natural curvy figures, but were criticized for “missing the ‘slim’ in ‘slim thick’.” It was all just too casual for me!  Why wasn’t anyone engaging with the fact that we had a serious epidemic on our hands—that POC women were dying under the knife for a procedure that had the highest death rate of any cosmetic surgery?

Why this play? Why now?

Because black and brown women continue to fall victim to a cosmetic procedure that is deeply flawed, unmonitored, and dangerous. Here are some stats from August 2023. The numbers have gone up from when I started my research in May 2022:

1.      +1M Brazilian Butt Lifts was done in this year alone (increased by 650% in past 10 years).

2.     Up to 455 people died from BBL surgery in 2023.

3.     1 in 250 women in the US have had a BBL.

4.    11% of all cosmetic procedures are Brazilian Butt Lifts.

5.     1 in every 2,300 BBLs result in the death of the patient due to complication related to the surgery.

6.    BBLs are 30 times more dangerous than breast augmentations.

7.     In the US, $2.8B worth of revenue is generated from BBL surgeries each year.

What would you like audiences to take away from seeing APPLE BOTTOM?

I am not trying to make anyone pro- or anti-BBL. A person has every right to alter their body the way their spirit feels fit. But I do want to advocate for POC women to make that life choice based solely on their wishes and not on what is being dictated by society. If you are a woman of color struggling with body dysmorphia, I hope you feel seen. I hope we can begin a conversation exploring how systemic racism prevents black and brown women from having these body augmentations done safely (whether the difficulty is with cost, accessibility to effective pre/post care, research, etc). I want to call for reform, research, and remedy on this unethical medical failure that has been bestowed on brown and black women.

What kind of research did you do to write the play?

Buttocks augmentation before and after Photo: Otto Placik CCA 3.0

First and foremost, I want to thank Nicky Maggio, a director and dramaturg friend, who joined me in finding and sorting through BBL research during my time as a writer-in-residence at the 2022 New Harmony Project Conference.

I combed YouTube and the internet for about every vlog of recent BBL patients and watched all of them! Watching these women document their BBL journeys and post-care really allowed me to build character motivation, psychology, speech patterns post-op, etc. Through their vlogs, I was able to get a full idea of what it is to be in a recovery house like Apple Bottom Spa from the lymphatic massages to their everyday interactions with the attendants.  (I also read plenty of negative reviews from dissatisfied patients at recovery houses based in Miami!) I watched recordings of live BBL surgeries. I listened to podcasts from plastic surgeons promoting or denouncing BBLs. I read epic manifestos dissecting the BBL as a cultural phenomenon and the societal and structural factors that play into it being a health crisis.

Did you encounter any surprises as you did your research?

A surgeon cannot see where the fat is landing inside your buttocks, which is why this surgery is so dangerous. Without visibility, a surgeon can accidentally insert the fat into a vein which can eventually lead to an embolism. That detail is always so shocking for me.

The play includes several scenes in which the characters disrobe before and after their operations. How do you imagine this happening on stage? Won’t you need to cast the play by body type?

This is a conversation I continue to have with the current artistic homes I’m developing APPE BOTTOM in. I have plans this summer to speak with intimacy coordinators and casting directors on how to navigate these factors in a mindful fashion. But it is important to me to show the truth of this procedure and its post care—and to show the body in its various stages during that time—however that may translate theatrically.

How important is it to the play that four of the five characters share a Caribbean background? 

As a Dominican-American/Caribbean woman and playwright, very. We need more Caribbean characters on stage! And misbehaving! 

The interactions among the five characters are so intense, flavorful and nuanced. Have you ever lived or worked with women like this? 

APPLE BOTTOM is a love letter to all the vivacious women in my life. I’ve been fortunate to be raised, mentored, befriended, and loved by brilliant, resilient, fiery, razor-tongued women. When I went to New Harmony Project to develop and outline APPLE BOTTOM, I brought photos of the women in my life—photos taken at dinner parties, office gatherings or us lounging at the pool. And I turned to my dramaturg, Nicky, and said, “I want Apple Bottom Spa to have the same fervent energy.” 

I grew up in a matriarchal Dominican family; the women run the show. All the women in my family are storytellers and every time we all get in a room together, you have to fight to get a word in. Everyone has an opinion about something; everyone is desperate to be heard. Everyone is half-listening because they’ve already done a deep analysis of what you just said and are planning a rebuttal. If you wanted to be heard, your voice and stories better be colorful and loud.

In the professional world, I have been really fortunate to be led and mentored by professional women of color who had a duality to them. They knew how to balance book and street smarts. And they were freakin’ hilarious; never shied away from a dirty joke. Every word was rooted in survival and humor. I wanted the Apple Bottom ladies to emulate that.

I’d like to shout out the fiery women in my life who have molded me: my sisters, my mother, my aunts, Renee, the HCE crew, all my spicy Italian playwriting teachers who have changed my life. A special thanks to the powerhouse women who continue to support and help develop this play: Linsay Firman, the APPLE BOTTOM cast, the folks at FLT, EWG, and La Jolla. Gracias. I am humbled by your womanhood.

Caro, the trans woman going through more than one kind of transition, seems to be the moral center of the play. What went into deciding to give this role to that character? 

Caro came to me first and very vividly. I knew how she looked right away, her strength, even her name. Caro, in Spanish, means “fancy,” “expensive,” “of quality”—and that’s who she is—a quality human being. She will give up her life to save yours and I think that’s utterly beautiful. I knew I needed a moral center and medical expert in the play, but she had to be someone who wasn’t medically trained in a professional setting. I really shaped Caro around the women in my life who abandoned their medical training because life happened—so they pivoted their knowledge to become a home attendant or homemaker. My mother, for example, went to medical school, but left the profession because she was a poet at heart. But she’s extremely knowledgeable in both traditional and holistic medicine, and that has served her in childrearing and taking care of my grandparents. I shaped Caro around my mother—someone who was scrappy, brilliant, a quick-thinker, resilient, no nonsense but her heart on her sleeve.

Kimberly Smedley

I also shaped Caro’s image around Trans figures such as Kimberly Smedley, who went to great extents to make her illegal silicon injection business (butt augmentation included) as safe as possible for her LGBTQA community—by even studying under prominent plastic surgeons. Like Smedley, Caro has also trained with plastic surgeons to better equip her (now shuttered) injection business—and deploying these safety practices with the Apple Bottom Spa clients..The popularization of injectable silicone can be attributed to the Trans community as a means to not only affirm gender needs, but to help with physical safety. Physical safety. I just felt that was a reality that needed to be reflected and honored in APPLE BOTTOM.

What’s next for Karina Billini?

In the fall, I begin my final year at The Juilliard School and the Public’s Emerging Writers Group as a playwriting fellow—which is very very very bittersweet. I will be spending this summer doing a massive rewrite on APPLE BOTTOM while brainstorming the next three plays I’m required to write for Juilliard!

APPLE BOTTOM is one of six readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 17. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.   

Jacob Marx Rice on the mental health of teenagers, physics study groups, writing science plays, and BINDING ENERGY

Jacob Marx Rice

When you’re seventeen, everything is charged with intensity. Imagine the forces swirling around four science nerds as they study for their AP Physics Exam. Love, sex, money, mental health and the hurricane of being seventeen whirl through BINDING ENERGY, the brilliant new dark comedy by Jacob Marx Rice.

BINDING ENERGY had its first public reading on April 25 at the Ensemble Studio Theater as part of the 2024 EST/Sloan First Light Festival.

Jacob recently shared his thoughts about how the play came to be.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Takes us back to the origin of BINDING ENERGY. What inspired you to write it?

This wonderful organization called Fresh Ground Pepper is an incubator of new plays and they have a summer writing retreat they run every year. I had taken a break from writing plays due to some personal stuff and was trying to figure out my way back in, but I was completely at a loss, so I applied to the retreat. I had zero idea what I was going to write, but they took pity on me and invited me to come figure it out in the woods. I spent the mornings chopping wood, the afternoons interviewing the college students who were apprentices at the retreat about their high school experience, and the nights writing snippets of dialogue until a play began to form.

Why this play? Why now?

I think that we are in an incredibly delicate and important moment for teenagers. Mental illness among current teenagers has skyrocketed, with anxiety and depression reaching truly terrifying levels and rates of teen suicide nearly doubling. If we don’t start listening to these teenagers and finding a way to make the world a better place for them, it’s going to get a lot worse. This play provides a lens into that landscape, reminding people of their own experience of high school while pushing them to better understand the specific challenges facing teens today.

All of the characters in BINDING ENERGY are science nerds preparing for an advanced placement physics exam. No teachers. No parents. What appealed to you about focusing on the dynamics of students trying to learn together?

Being a teenager is such an isolating experience. Even when parents and teachers are nearby, it is so hard for them to actually relate that it can feel like you are alone. I had wonderful, caring parents and deeply committed teachers, but I still felt like I had to figure everything out myself. I wanted the world of the play to reflect that feeling.

Taken at the reading of BINDING ENERGY at EST on April 25. From left, Linsay Firman, Program Director of EST/Sloan Project; actor and friend of EST Seth Clayton; Sam Heldt, who read the part of Will in the play; Katie Palmer, Co-Artistic Director of Theater in Asylum; and playwright Jacob Marx Rice.

Were you ever in a study group like the one in your play? Were the interactions in the group as dramatic as in your play?

I was in a study group almost exactly like the one in the play, though it was for chemistry rather than physics. And, unfortunately, a surprising number of the most dramatic parts of the play are based on real experiences. And the ones that aren’t, are based on the experiences of teenagers I interviewed throughout the process. Just about every single story in this play is from someone’s real experience even (or perhaps especially) the stuff that is most horrifying.

You have a degree in astrophysics and you’ve taught high school physics. How did you decide how much science to include in the play?

The hardest thing about writing a play with science in it is not letting the science completely take over. Science is so full of cool ideas and fun facts, especially in physics, and some of the early drafts had these enormous diversions into awesome but irrelevant stuff I wanted people to know more about. In the end, I tried to apply a strict rule: if it doesn’t support the characters and the themes, it doesn’t get to go into the play. It was brutal paring it down, but the end result is that every physics moment either pushes the characters forward in the plot or reveals something true about who they are.

What do you want the audience to take away from BINDING ENERGY?

That it is so damn hard to be a teenager. But also that growth, and grace, are possible.

The Willamette Meteorite at the Museum of Natural History Photo: Mike Peel CC-BY-SA-4.0.

One of the most memorable passages in your play is Will’s description of his encounter with the Willamette meteorite. It’s such a beautiful set piece. When did that passage originate?

I’m pretty sure that monologue was the last thing I wrote. I wanted to give the audience a peak into Will’s head when he’s not consumed by his desires and his mental illness. I wanted them to see the little boy, deeply flawed but also deeply hopeful, at the center of this person who causes so much harm. This play is attempting to examine the ways people hurt each other. The goal is never to justify or dismiss it, but to understand where it comes from and to see the humanity in everyone. That’s not an easy feat, but I believe it’s a vital one. 

Would you like to comment on how the behavior of atomic particles is similar to the behavior of teenagers?

About halfway through the play, one of the characters points out that “physics is all just things pulling each other closer or pushing away.” That’s true of physics and it’s even more true of teenagers. In this play, each of the characters is based on a specific subatomic particle and that shapes their interactions with each other. But on a more fundamental level, I think being a teenager (or being a person) is really about trying to navigate the constant push and pull of other people in your life. Those forces can bring you together, or they can rip you apart, but we are all subject to the same constant struggle. 

You’ve developed plays with several theater companies. How is the EST/Sloan development process different?

This play was incredibly hard to write and took much longer than I expected. I was blown away by how much EST supported me throughout, always there to talk through the dramaturgy but never rushing my process as I worked to figure things out. They were also so open to exploration. To the extent that there is a “standard” Sloan play, my play definitely doesn’t fit the mold. There are no actual scientists in the play! But they were totally open to going on this journey with me, while also providing clear guiderails to make sure that the play kept science at the center. It was such an open process, and the people were so kind throughout. It really was a pleasure to be a part of.

What’s next for Jacob Marx Rice?

Deadline just announced a film I wrote (about a magician who gets pulled into the horrific maw of WW2 and has to use his wits, and his magic tricks, to survive the unsurvivable) that is set to shoot in 2025. And I’ve been in talks with a few theaters around the country about my play A Brief List of Everyone Who Died, which premiered at the Finborough in London last year and was nominated for four off West End Awards. I’m really hoping to be able to bring it stateside soon.

BINDING ENERGY was one of six readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 17. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.       

Sandra Daley-Sharif on “granny” midwives, maternal mortality, healthcare inequities, and AMMA’S WIT

Sandra A. Daley-Sharif

When medicine advances, what gets left behind? How much of what midwives knew have we lost as modern medical practice sidelines them? In AMMA’S WIT, Sandra Daley-Sharif puts the lives and experiences of Black “granny” midwives centerstage as she tells the stories of two generations of midwives in early twentieth century Alabama: what they knew, what they suffered, how they coped.

AMMA’S WIT will have its first public reading this Thursday, June 6 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of the 2024 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free and reservations are encouraged.

Sandra kindly took the time to answer our many questions about the play.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

What inspired you to write AMMA’S WIT?

The inspiration behind AMMA'S WIT is deeply rooted in my personal connection to the sacred art of midwifery and a profound reverence for the forgotten legacies of the granny midwives – those extraordinary Black women who embodied the divine power of bringing new life into the world.

I was born in my great-grandmother's house and having witnessed the empowering experience of both my daughters being delivered by midwives, I have always felt a profound connection to the God-given strength that lies within every woman's body. This connection fueled my desire to explore and honor the stories of those who came before us, the women who dedicated their lives to nurturing and supporting mothers during a time when hospitals were inaccessible to the poor, both Black and White.

Through my research, I discovered the narratives of trailblazers like Onnie Lee Logan, Mary Francis Hill Coley, Margaret Charles Smith, and countless others. These granny midwives were more than just birth attendants; they were family counselors, breastfeeding consultants, postpartum doulas, nutritionists, and advocates. Highly respected within their communities, they viewed their work as a sacred calling from God, a privilege to usher new life into the world.

Yet, despite their invaluable contributions, these women were ostracized and erased, victims of a society that sought to disempower women over their own bodies and choices. Their stories resonated with me on a profound level, igniting a desire to give voice to those who have been systematically silenced, to reclaim the narratives that have been suppressed, and to celebrate the resilience, spirituality, and unwavering dedication of these remarkable women.

In AMMA'S WIT, I have woven together these narratives, creating a tapestry that honors the legacy of the granny midwives, while also serving as a powerful reminder of the ongoing struggle for reproductive rights and autonomy. It is a tribute to the enduring strength of those who have fought to reclaim control over their bodies and their destinies, and a call to embrace the divine power that resides within every woman.

From left: Midwives Onnie Lee Logan, Mary Francis Hill Coley, Margaret Charles Smith

Why this play? Why now?

I think AMMA'S WIT is a timely and poignant reminder of the granny midwives' legacy. The play sheds light on their vital role in providing holistic healthcare and championing reproductive autonomy for women, especially in underserved communities. As the reversal of Roe v. Wade threatens to restrict access to safe and legal abortions, this play serves as a powerful reminder of the ongoing struggle for body autonomy and the importance of trusting women's ancestral knowledge and instincts.

Moreover, with Black women experiencing disproportionately higher rates of maternal mortality and preventable childbirth complications, AMMA'S WIT underscores the need for culturally competent and comprehensive maternal care. By honoring the granny midwives' approach to pregnancy and birthing, this play advocates a shift toward a more holistic healthcare model that empowers women and prioritizes their well-being.

What research did you do to write the play?

To write the play, I conducted extensive research by reading biographies of granny midwives, watching films/documentaries like All My Babies (about midwife Mary Francis Hill Coley) and Why Not Home?, interviewing current midwives, drawing from my personal experiences, and consulting with a liaison who works on bridging the tenuous relationship between hospitals and midwives. I also examined articles on women's experiences with the medical system, global childbirth practices involving midwifery, and the history of childbirth. This comprehensive approach informed a play that, I would say, is grounded in movement, text, and music to authentically capture the full-body experience of birth through dance and the rhythms that define time and space. 

Did you encounter any surprises as you researched the stories of different midwives in twentieth-century Alabama?

A sobering discovery from my research was the persisting false beliefs among some healthcare providers about biological differences between Black and White people, such as Black people having "less sensitive nerve endings, thicker skin, and stronger bones." These harmful beliefs have led to medical providers today underestimating Black patients' pain levels and recommending inadequate relief measures. And, here’s the kicker, shockingly, the disparities exist regardless of education or income level: Black women who have a college education or higher experience a pregnancy-related mortality rate over five times higher than White women, and 1.6 times higher than even White women with less than a high school degree. This stark reality underscores the urgent need to address systemic biases and inequities in maternal healthcare. 

Aunt Sally, midwife May 1939 Gees Bend, Alabama Photo: Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990) Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress. Public Domain

While much of the play’s action focuses on the experiences of a fictional midwife, Amma Hagar Clark, a second plot line follows Billie Jean, a young woman, just shy of 16, pregnant by her father. Why was it important for you to include her storyline? 

It was crucial to include Billie Jean's storyline as a pregnant teen, impregnated by her father, to confront the complex and controversial issue of abortion rights head-on. Drawing from the real-life stance of a midwife I researched, who refused to perform abortions due to her personal beliefs and experiences, this parallel plot line forces the audience to grapple with the profound ethical dilemmas surrounding body autonomy and reproductive choices. By bringing in this narrative, I invite what I believe is a vital and necessary conversation about the very body empowerment issue society is grappling with today. 

What’s next for Sandra Daley-Sharif?

As a storyteller for Theatre and TV, I am driven by a passion to illuminate the stories of marginalized people with resilient spirits that have shaped our world, especially featuring women of color. My current projects are a testament to this mission.

With my new play (still researching) "Carved from Stone, Cast in Resilience," I am embarking on a journey to breathe life into the extraordinary legacies of Edmonia Lewis, Meta Warrick Fuller, and Augusta Savage – three groundbreaking African American sculptors whose triumphs and enduring influence have often been obscured. Through a blend of drama, visual storytelling, and the omniscient narration of the Goddess of Perseverance, I aim to depict the challenges and triumphs of these remarkable women, celebrating their indelible mark on the art world.

In "We Shall Overcome," a limited series for TV based on the novel The Cigar Factory, I am weaving together the parallel narratives of two working-class families, united by their shared struggles within the harsh confines of a cigar factory. As segregation initially blinds them to their common plight, the pivotal 1945 Tobacco Workers Strike ignites a powerful realization – that by joining forces, they can harness the strength of solidarity. "We Shall Overcome” not only captures a profound moment in labor history but also traces the roots of the iconic protest song that would later become the Civil Rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome.” Pitch deck available.

And then there's "Say It Loud," another limited series for TV; a vibrant exploration of the cultural revolution that swept through Harlem's iconic Apollo Theater in 1964. Here, I follow the fearless journey of a young production manager nurturing the greatest acts in the history of soul music, navigating a world in the throes of transformation with unwavering determination. Pitch deck and pilot script available.

Through these diverse narratives, I strive to amplify the voices that have been muted, to shed light on the extraordinary resilience that has paved the way for progress, and to inspire audiences to embrace the power of perseverance in the face of adversity.

AMMA’S WIT is one of six readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 17. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Melisa Tien on coding, launching a FemTech app, VC sexism, and DISRUPTED

Melisa Tien Photo: Joseph O’Malley

How much of a game changer for women is the ability to code? What are the challenges in developing an app about women’s health? In her provocative new play DISRUPTED, Melisa Tien explores how two women join forces to create a brand-new app—one that tracks the menstrual cycle—and form a partnership that gets tested to its limits.

DISRUPTED will have its first public reading this Thursday, May 23 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theater as part of the 2024 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free and reservations are encouraged.

Melisa generously found time between rewrites and rehearsals to talk to us about the play and her process.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

How did DISRUPTED come to be?

 I’ve had an interest in FemTech for a while, initially as a consumer, and then as a female freelancer participating in work environments that are traditionally male-dominated. All of this was on my mind when I proposed a narrative based on the origins of the first menstruation-tracking app for EST’s Sloan commission. The play has changed a lot since that proposal, in terms of what the crux of the conflict is, and what’s at stake. I’m exceedingly grateful to EST for being so helpful and encouraging through all the permutations. 

Why this play? Why now? 

Ida Tin, Danish entrepreneur who invented Clue, the first menstruation-tracking app in 2013, and also coined the term “FemTech” for technology designed for women’s health. CC2.0

I diverged from the true story of the first menstruation-tracking app in significant ways. One of them was that I changed the setting from Denmark to the U.S. I’m more familiar with the workplace culture, gender gap, and history of tech in the U.S. To me, these topics are as germane to contemporary life as they were a decade ago when the play is set. I also elected to change the ethnicity of the named characters to those of Asian descent. A decade ago, I would have considered this a sure-fire way of killing any chances of the play being produced. Today, it feels like an invitation to an ever-growing pool of actors of Asian descent, and an ever-growing audience that embraces work featuring predominantly Asian casts, to engage with thoughtful and thought-provoking storytelling.  

What would you like the audience to take away from DISRUPTED? 

That they’ve seen something engrossing unfold between two people, and they’re unsure whether either one was 100% in the right or 100% in the wrong. Also—how apropos it is that the context is the trial-by-fire world of tech and app development. 

Do you code? Have you ever developed an app yourself?

I’ve taken a couple of free HTML coding courses through the New York Public Library’s TechConnect program. We didn’t go as far as app development; we only created very basic websites. I do have a friend who’s a musician who has successfully developed apps geared toward music-making.

A screen from the menstruation-tracking app Clue

Did you work with a consultant? How did that change the play?

I got the chance to speak at length with the person who coded the apps that my musician friend published. He provided a ton of insight—he assured me that the way the story plays out is believable, he offered details on what constitutes “good” and “bad” code, and he explained how databases associated with apps can often be more valuable than the users themselves, among many other things. All of this impacted what I put into, and how I told, the story.

As you present it in the play, coding seems to offer truly disruptive power. It can be a tool for good in enabling a socially enriching app or it can be a means of mischief, even destruction. Does the ability to code change the game for women who code?

Today there are organizations whose mission is to get more women (and any non-male-identifying folx, for that matter) into coding; there’s still a pretty stark gap in the industry. Because of this, if you’re a woman who can code, and code well, you stand a good chance of getting hired over a male with similar abilities. I’d add that being a coder is thought of as the lowest level of a hierarchy that places developers above coders, and software engineers above developers. Any of these levels is available to women (or anyone non-male identifying) for the taking.

How did you make the scenes Juni has with the venture capitalists so sadly, comically on the nose? Did you interview any VCs as part of your research? 

As it turns out, I did not interview any VCs or angel investors, partly because I didn’t want them to feel like I was pointedly criticizing them—though I do have criticisms about their approach. Instead, I dug around and found the kinds of comments the real founder of the first menstruation-tracking app received when she went through her first round of pitching. She pitched only to men (unsurprising for the time), and though their feedback was given in good faith and intended to be helpful, it seems patently absurd from my perspective as someone who menstruates and uses a menstruation-tracking app religiously. That vast disconnect—of experience and understanding—is sad, funny, and also fascinating to me.

From left, Jennifer Tsay (Shin-Yi) and Jaime Schwarz (Juni)

In your recent rewrite of DISRUPTED, you begin with Shin-Yi and Juni onstage reflecting on their journey together so that it becomes something of a “memory” play. Why make that change?  

I’m interested in seeing them tell their story as a team, up to the point where the app gets massive amounts of funding and really explodes. Then I’m interested in seeing how their narratives begin to diverge.  I’m intrigued by how different perspectives translate to different accounts of how an event happened, and how and why things went wrong. 

What message does DISRUPTED have for those interested in launching a successful app?

Launching an app is not unlike putting a work of theater out in the world, insofar as if you have an idea, and the will to bring that idea to fruition, then you’re well on your way. Both require insane amounts of hard work to realize, but just about anyone with a good idea, tenacious will, and decent-to-exceptional ability can do it.

You’ve written as many librettos for operas—and had them produced—as you have plays. How is writing a libretto different from writing a play? Do you have a preference? 

When I write a libretto, I start with a detailed outline prior to writing the first line of text. The outline indicates every plot point and every moment where one or more singers will sing a big number. After I finish a draft of a libretto, much of the revision happens within the songs; I focus on fine-tuning the lyrics. When I write a play, more likely than not, there’s no outline and I’m going on instinct, forging ahead with only a vague notion of where I’m headed. Once I’ve got a messy draft down, I’ll revise—plot, structure, characters, whatever needs revising. I like writing plays and librettos equally, as both are such different processes; they exercise different parts of my brain.

What’s next for Melisa Tien? 

In June, with support from The Assembly, I’ll be showing an excerpt of a piece about autonomous driving technology and its impact on the long-haul trucking industry and long-distance truckers in particular. It will have movement and text and is based on interviews I did with truckers along Interstate-80 over the course of a cross-country research trip. Next year, I’m premiering a couple of short operas, one with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and one with American Opera Projects here in New York City. And somewhere in between, I’m hoping to make a short film.

DISRUPTED is one of six readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 17. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.       

Jacquelyn Reingold on fear, neuroscience, sexism, playwrights over 50, and FEAR LESS

Jacquelyn Reingold

What would life be like if you could not experience fear? How much fear do we need? Which part of the brain governs fear? FEAR LESS, the compelling new play by Jacquelyn Reingold, tells the story of Orva, whose damaged amygdala prevents her from feeling fear, and Nadine, the neuroscientist who spends years studying her. What transpires is an investigation into fear, fearlessness, boundaries, friendship, and the struggle to survive.

FEAR LESS will have its first public reading this Thursday, May 16 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theater as part of the 2024 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free and reservations are encouraged.

Squeezing in time between rehearsals, rewrites, and other commitments, Jacquelyn Reingold kindly agreed to tell us more.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Where did the idea for FEAR LESS come from?

The idea for FEAR LESS came from reading about a real person, studied for decades, because she was “fearless.” There was a brief explosion of articles, social media, about a woman with this unusual condition. The more I read, the more questions I had, and the more intrigued I was. It got me thinking about the role of fear in women’s lives. I wondered what would happen if two women: one “fearless,” and one “fearful,” were put together, dramatically. That’s where the play began.

FEAR LESS covers so much: the neuroscience of what happens when someone has a damaged amygdala, the complex relationship that can develop between a researcher and her subject, the power politics of scientific research. What research did you do to write this play?

I talked with several neuroscientists about fear, which, I quickly learned, was infinitely complex. I read articles and books that discussed conflicting, changing, theories. The research was, for me, a way to find questions to write to, and themes to dig into. At a certain point the play took over. I then cared about the characters, their lives, their arcs, and I hoped the audience would, as well. The play became the thing. I tried to find these two women’s stories, best I could.

I also heard from neuroscientists about sexism and racism in the field, and in academia in general, past and present. One story about the male professors in a department lunching at a strip club without the one female professor, stuck with me. In addition to many anecdotes of biased practices around funding, hiring, assignments, credit, promotions, grants. It was a long list.

What do you want the audience to take away from FEAR LESS?

My hope is that people will leave the play thinking about the experience of fear — for Orva, a white working-class woman, with a damaged “fear center,” and for Nadine, a Black neuroscientist, with a sensitive “fear center.” And I hope people will think about the role of fear in all our lives, but especially for women. How much do we need? How much is too much, or too little? And how, like Orva and Nadine, are we different, similar, allied, impossibly apart, and how we might come together. Or not.

Your play String Fever about string theory, the Theory of Everything, and other string-related subjects, was an EST/Sloan Mainstage Production in 2003. What makes writing an EST/Sloan play different?

The specific challenge for me, in writing an EST/Sloan play, is finding how to make the science personal. If I don’t find a personal way in, I can’t write it. If I can’t find a story I care about, I don’t want to write it. I write plays because I love to explore characters I love, so if I can’t find that piece of their heart that moves me, and makes me want to imagine their stories, I won’t write the play. And science doesn’t necessarily lead to that. At least not for me.

Evan Handler with Jacquelyn Reingold at the Lillys in 2023

You received a Lilly Award last year for your work as a playwright and for co-founding Honor Roll!, an advocacy group for women playwrights over 40. How did Honor Roll! come about? Have you been able to measure its impact?

Yes, I received a Lilly Award last year, as a playwright and as an advocate. It was thrilling. Honor Roll! an organization I co-founded, received a monetary award as well. Honor Roll! is a grass-roots group that advocates for women+ playwrights over 40. Since its founding, I’ve discovered it’s women over 50 that are (mission statement:) “the generation once excluded because of sexism, now overlooked because of ageism.” Playwright Cheryl Davis and I are on a campaign to meet with every theater in New York to advocate for greater inclusion for women playwrights over 50. Future seasons will tell us if we’ve succeeded. We are not giving up.

In his speech introducing you at the Lilly Awards, Evan Handler (who was in String Fever at EST) attested that you are his favorite playwright, noting “I love Jackie’s plays because they mine a life that’s full of truths stranger than fiction, to create metaphors more perfect than poetry.” He then went on to say that your plays are “shockingly underproduced.” Why do you think that is?

I was so happy when EST member Evan Handler, who directed my first play, and was in String Fever, introduced me at the Lillys. Why are my plays, as Evan said, “shockingly unproduced?” I guess you’d have to ask theaters. Maybe I said, and did, too many stupid things when I was younger. Or maybe there were too few opportunities then, and at a certain point, I wasn’t marketable. I didn’t go to an elite MFA program. I never had a mentor. I don’t care about fashion; I write what interests me. Or maybe theaters don’t like my writing! But once I passed my mid-40s, almost all of the small-theater opportunities I’d had, disappeared, and never returned. Happily, I was embraced by TV, where I had fun getting paid, writing for some great shows, and working with some amazing people. But I always missed what I most loved: writing plays.

What’s next for Jacquelyn Reingold?

What’s next for me? Another play.

FEAR LESS is one of six readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 17. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.       

Amanda Keating on medieval nuns who paint, dental anthropology, COVID-19, and WITH FELLOWSHIP

Amanda Keating

Has how we work together changed over time? What can we know now about those who lived 1,000 years ago? WITH FELLOWSHIP, the captivating new play by Amanda Keating, tells two parallel stories: an 11th-century nun grinds beetles to create the precious inks she uses to illuminate manuscripts, and, in our time, a team of researchers studies that nun’s fossilized dental plaque to try to reveal secrets about her life.

WITH FELLOWSHIP will have a live public reading this Thursday, June 22 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of the 2023 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free and reservations are encouraged.

Amanda reveals her insights about the play below.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Tell us how WITH FELLOWSHIP originated?

I originally wrote WITH FELLOWSHIP as a short play for a Sloan-themed Youngblood brunch back in 2019, after I read about some very cool research that was published around the same time. Like Charlie in the play, I’ve always been really fascinated by the Middle Ages and manuscript illumination specifically, so this research — which hypothesized that women in monastic communities were more involved with manuscript production than we previously thought — really excited me. I also have spent many years working in a myriad of workplaces and was eager to write about the strange experience of being in a community with others in that context.

Self-portrait of Guda, 12th-century German nun and illuminator. One of the first woman to create a self-portrait in a manuscript. Her inscription: “Guda, a sinner, wrote and painted this book.” (Frankfurt am Main Staatsbibliothek / Public Domain)

What research did you do to write the play? Did you work with a consultant?

My research mostly involved reading a lot of books about monastic life in the Middle Ages, particularly for women, texts on manuscript illumination, and a handful of articles and books about the study of dental anthropology. I didn’t work with any consultants or researchers, just dug into the materials I could get my hands on to see where they led me.

Why this play? Why now?

I finished the first draft of this play in 2020, right before the pandemic, but the play always felt oddly in conversation with COVID-19. There’s a lot of discussion of “plague” in the 11th-century sections of the play. In both worlds, the characters all feel the need for fellowship, community, and purpose in the wake of crisis and loss. For me, this play feels relevant now because we’re all sort of re-learning community and what it means to be good to each other. I think this is a universal human experience and something that the characters in the play grapple with, whether they inhabit the 11th century or today.

This play is also important to me in how it centers women’s voices in fields that have been largely dominated by men — science and manuscript production. There are male characters in the play, but they exist entirely offstage, allowing us to really see these two workplaces and worlds through the perspectives of female-identifying characters.

Dental calculus on the lower jaw of a medieval woman (B78) entrapped lapis lazuli pigment (Photo courtesy of Christina Warinner)

WITH FELLOWSHIP was first included in the First Light Festival in 2020. How has the play changed since then?

The play has continued to evolve since 2020! I have done a couple of other readings — mostly virtual — over the years, as well as some “cut” versions of the play that explored B78’s story in isolation. But the 2020 First Light reading was hugely informative for the growth of this play, and because many of the rewrites have been undertaken during the pandemic, I’ve been especially curious about the ways in which the play is in conversation with our experience of the last few years. The structure of the play has remained largely the same but I’ve worked to deepen that conversation, as well as to consider how the two worlds (medieval and contemporary) overlap and collide throughout the play.

You are a former member of EST’s Youngblood program. How did being a member of Youngblood influence or change your playwriting?

Scene from RETREAT by Amanda Keating, Ensemble Studio Theatre (2016) (Photo: Jody Christopherson)

Being in Youngblood changed everything for me. It connected me to a huge community of artists and allowed me to see a lot of the work I was writing on its feet. I wrote many brunch and Asking for Trouble plays that taught me how audiences responded to my characters and sense of humor, and was able to work with incredible teams of actors and directors on a handful of readings as well as a workshop production of my play RETREAT in 2016. I learned so much about myself as a writer and a person in Youngblood and am so grateful to have spent four years with the group.

What’s next for Amanda Keating?

Great question! I just finished up my MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop, so “what’s next” is mostly moving back to the city, hanging out with my dog, and figuring out how to game alternate side parking. I’m also working on a handful of other plays, including a new piece called MELINDAS about three women named Melinda and a dead body in a freezer.

WITH FELLOWSHIP is one of seven readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 22. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.       

Larissa Lury on vanguard aviators, physical storytelling, mental constructs, and S P A C E

L M Feldman (top; photo: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey); Larissa Lury (photo: Mike Simses)

Our 60+ years of exploring outer space have been defined by “missions” but what is the mission of our time? Drawing on the experiences of women pilots and astronauts over the past 100 years, S P A C E, the lively and thought-provoking new play written by L M Feldman and directed by Larissa Lury, revisits the challenges, joys, and inequities of what we have achieved so far and asks us to imagine what could be different.

S P A C E will have its first public reading this Thursday, June 15 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of the 2023 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free and reservations are encouraged.

Taking time out from a hectic last week of rehearsals and rewrites, co-creator Larissa Lury kindly answered our many questions.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

How did S P A C E come to be?

About a decade ago, my partner showed me an article about thirteen pilots who underwent the medical tests for astronauts in the earliest years of the space program, and it sparked me, because it looked like a rare moment in history when technological advancement and the movement towards a more equitable society aligned—and then that fell apart.  A few years later, when L and I first met and started brainstorming projects we might develop together, this idea and the idea that became L’s play THRIVE, OR WHAT YOU WILL were the two that rose to the top of the list.

The process for developing S P A C E has been extremely collaborative, with L and I sometimes working together outside of the typical “lanes” for a director and a playwright, inventing the process as we go. We’ve also been extremely lucky to work with villages of collaborators, including ensembles of brilliant actors and dramaturgs, who have contributed a lot to making this play what it is.  

Why this play? Why now?

Mae Jemison and her 100 Year Starship Project

We’re inspired by the ideas of Dr. Mae Jemison and 100 Year Starship. Their idea is that by setting a currently impossible mission (in this case to travel outside of our star system in the next 100 years), we begin to define and develop the practices, values, and technology necessary in the moment and place we are in, here and now.  The characters in S P A C E are inspired by folx who spent/are spending their lives redefining what’s possible.  The play looks at the forces at work in our world that we want to tap into, push against, or leave behind, and the capabilities and potential we have to do that. It wrestles with what questions we need to ask ourselves to define and pursue the mission of what world we want to live in and how we want to live in it.

The characters in S P A C E span quite a range of women aviators, from Bessie Coleman in the 1920s to Jackie Cochran in the 1940s to Sally Ride in the 1980s, Mae Jemison in the 1990s, and Christina Diaz Hernandez and Jasmin Moghbeli today. What do they have in common? Do you have a favorite?

Bessie Coleman in 1923 (Wikipedia Commons/Public Domain)

I can’t pick a favorite—too many amazing people in the mix.  I would say what they have in common is that flying, and/or space (whether traveling through human spaceflight or through a rover), connects with a sense of self-actualization for them.  Several of the characters in this play have found stunning ways of creating paths where there weren’t any, or have found their ways around barriers that would stop most people. By seeing through their eyes, we can start to share the imagination and vision that makes the realization of the seemingly impossible possible. Bessie Coleman, for example, was born to a mother who worked as a maid and a father who worked as a sharecropper. Her father, who was Cherokee, left her family to live back in Oklahoma, where he hoped he would experience less prejudice.  When no flight school in the U.S. would accept her because she was a Black woman, she learned French, and flew to Paris, only to arrive a week after the flight schools there had been closed to women.  She traveled to the North of France, got her pilot’s license there, went to Germany to learn from WWI flying aces, and returned to the US, where she performed aerobatics that stunned the public.  She used her popularity to desegregate the spaces she performed in. She described the sky as the one place free from prejudice. 

In addition to being a playwright, one (or both) of you are also circus performers. Do you envision productions of S P A C E to involve elements of the circus? 

One of the things that brought L and I together as collaborators is the fact that we think about storytelling physically in addition to verbally. Earlier ideas for the play involved full-on acrobatics—hoop diving, spring boarding, etc. As the play has evolved, it became important to us to be able to tell this story with an ensemble of actors who are not necessarily acrobats, and some of those physical gestures have been replaced by language that would make those gestures redundant.  However, we are still all about the physicality of this playworld and integrating physical feats that give us the sense of playfulness and awe the play is asking for.

How do you visualize members of the cast “floating” onstage?

We got to play with some of the physicality of the world with an amazing ensemble of actors as a part of a Next Stage residency with The Drama League. There’s a version of this play where actors are suspended in the air, but there’s also an exciting version of the play where the audience is let in on the playfulness of it all, and we get to evoke space the way five-year-olds do, and the liberation of that is a part of the feeling of the scene.  There are also some extraordinary ways of achieving “floating” by supporting each other’s weight or giving individual body parts a quality of weightlessness.

Some action in the play takes place in a parallel universe. Are you hopeful that things would be better in a parallel universe—or are we likely to recreate the same problems?

Maybe we can let the play speak to that ;-).  That’s a conversation I would love to have with folx after they see the play.  I wonder whether they will find hope in it or something else.

What appeals to you about outer space?

When it comes to The Unknown, what our imaginations project onto it, the way we approach it, and what questions it sparks for us all reflect back to us something about who we are, what we value, and what we believe is possible.  The fact that in learning about space, we need to shift entire mental constructs—like our concept of time as a dimension, our understanding of the ways in which forces act on one another, and our ideas about what boundaries exist and are, how energy moves, and the idea of infinity—makes thinking about it extremely compelling to me.  In even thinking about space, and definitely in exploring it, we have to question ourselves and things we fundamentally hold true.

So much of the way we’ve been approaching space exploration as earthlings, but especially as Americans, frightens me.  It parallels many of the mistakes humans have made along the way when approaching what is new to them; we are colonizing, throwing trash “away” without a second thought, because of a sense that what is vast seems unlimited. We are allowing people with the most money to make decisions about who gets to access what, and we are proceeding as if our own notions about what kinds of matter matters are givens. 

And yet, there is so much potential for us to approach this differently, to learn new ways of conceiving of the known world by asking the questions that the currently “Unknown” to us invites in our imaginations.

S P A C E is one of seven readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 22. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.       

Margot Connolly on girls who code, apps that change the planet, writing after Dobbs, and HELLO, WORLD

Margot Connolly

Can an app change the world, even a little bit? Can being able to code change your life? How do you code as a team? You could learn the answers this Thursday, June 8 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theatre during a public reading of HELLO, WORLD, the vibrant new play written by Margot Connolly and directed by Alex Keegan. The reading is free and part of the 2023 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. Reservations are encouraged.

HELLO, WORLD takes us inside two teams of teenage girls as they compete to see who can code an app that could change the world for the better.  As we watch them, we have to ask: who decides which app and cause are most worthy of winning? Playwright Connolly kindly answered our questions before the very first reading of the play when it was part of the 2020 First Light Festival.  The times—and the play—have changed quite a bit since so we now have a revised interview with some new replies.  

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Where did the idea for HELLO, WORLD come from?

Alex Keegan, my director and collaborator, and I have been interested for a while in creating a play about girls who code. We were originally inspired by a photo of Margaret Hamilton, one of the women who worked on the guidance software for Apollo. In this picture, she’s standing next to a tower of binders taller than her. It’s all the code for the Apollo mission, written by hand. The image is so compelling—this idea that not only have women been working in these fields for so long, largely unrecognized, but also the sheer amount of work that goes into creating all these basic things. We batted around that image for a while but never had a compelling story to go along with it. Finally, we put together the idea of girls coding. There are these real-life all-girl coding competitions that are meant to encourage girls to get involved in tech. From there we were able to come up with a rough idea for a story. Last year, I turned that outline into the first draft of HELLO, WORLD.

Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton poses with the Apollo guidance software she and her team developed at MIT in 1969. Photos: MIT Museum

Why this play? Why now?

We live in a world in which teenagers are more and more empowered to change the world around them.  Look at Greta Thunberg, at X Gonzalez, and the other gun control activists from Parkland, Florida, etc. A huge part of what they have achieved is due to their access to technology: how fluent they are in social media and how that translates into media savvy, how having access to the internet opens doors and worlds that wouldn’t have existed for them fifty years ago. At the same time, the world around them is in desperate shape. These kids are forced to fight for themselves because they have no faith that adults will fight for them—and the matters they are fighting for are literally about life and death. So, looking at coding as a means of resistance for these girls, as a way for them to be able to engage with and change the world around them, especially as teenage girls who are historically not taken seriously, was most of what we were interested in while working on this play.

In a lot of ways, this play has been harder for me to work on than others because it’s so of the moment. Both the situation in Flint and the situation with abortion legislation in America are constantly changing, so it’s been interesting to figure out how to address that and make sure the information in the play is accurate, but not to the extent that I have to do a full rewrite every time a restrictive abortion bill hits the news. The specifics are less important than the need. Now more than ever, we need to be giving teenagers, particularly young women, a voice and to empower them to feel like they can make these changes to their world, and that’s what HELLO, WORLD is about. 

Girl Code with authors Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser

What kind of research did you do?  

I’m not a science-brained person, so I went to the library and found a bunch of books about coding meant for kids to try and wrap my head around the subject. I played some online games that teach coding to kids too, like CoderDojo. I basically treated myself like a fifth grader to get a hang of the basics. I was also super-inspired by the organization Girls Who Code and used their websites and the book Girl Code (written by Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser, who went through the Girls Who Code summer program and made a really awesome game, Tampon Run, to de-stigmatize menstruation!  I also love documentaries, so watched a lot of those. The most useful was CodeGirl, about the real-life Technovation Challenge for Girls, but I also watched Flint Town and After Tiller, among other docs, to try and get a glimpse of the worlds of these girls.

The team from Moldova whose Pure Water app won the Technovation Challenge in 2014

The apps your two teams develop—one related to abortion, the other to clean water—are actually quite compelling. Where did the idea for them originate? 

Part of our process was looking at the apps developed in the documentary CodeGirl, all of which serve some sort of need in their environment. One of the winning teams from previous years of the competition was a group of girls from Moldova who made an app to track contaminated well water in the community. That led us to think about how this isn’t just an issue for girls from third world countries. This was a kind of app that people in our own country could benefit from, like people in Flint who have spent the last six years dealing with uncertainty about their water supply. That led us to the idea for the team of girls from Flint, whose app is meant to track the nearest locations to collect clean, bottled water.  

Heather Booth, who founded the Jane Collective in 1965 as a 19-year-old University of Chicago student

For the Iowa team, I was particularly interested in the history of the Jane Collective, a group of women in Chicago pre-Roe v. Wade who helped connect women in need to underground abortion providers, and who eventually taught themselves to administer abortions in order to provide all women with affordable and safe abortions. After Roe v. Wade, they disbanded, but when we considered that many states are down to one abortion clinic and when the financial strain and time commitment of getting to and from that clinic makes getting an abortion difficult if not impossible, we started thinking about what the modern-day equivalent to the Jane Collective would be, and that’s where the idea of the app from the Iowa team was born. 

HELLO, WORLD had its first reading as part of the 2020 First Light Festival. What have you changed in the play since then and why?

The first reading of HELLO, WORLD in 2020 was amazingly helpful—it gave me a lot of great information about how to balance the three teams of characters in the play, how to deepen the inner lives of the teenaged protagonists, and how to complicate the world of the competition. However, by the time we got to the reading on March 12, 2020, the world was rapidly shutting down around us. The world that play lived in no longer exists. I said in my initial interview with you that this play was an interesting challenge to me because it was so “of the moment” and the moment that we're in now is a very different moment than pre-pandemic. So, the big project in this draft was shifting the events of the play from 2019 to 2022 and tweaking things to fit that new timeline—whether that's the weirdness of students being at an in-person coding competition for the first time since COVID, the new state of abortion access in America, or the ongoing nature of the crisis in Flint.   

Tell us more about how what has changed in the world has changed the play.

So much has changed in the world since the 2020 reading! The thing that required the most attention was the Dobbs Supreme Court ruling in June 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. When I was writing about the Iowa team's app JaneRide in 2020, I never imagined that we'd take such a drastic step backwards regarding the constitutionally protected right to abortion. When revisiting the play, it felt wrong to keep the work set in 2019 and ignore this seismic shift, especially since it brings a lot of interesting questions to the Iowa teams' project: is their app even more urgent in this new landscape, or is it dangerous or potentially illegal in light of new legislation? By moving the play to 2022, only a few weeks after the Dobbs decision, I was able to work in some of these questions while still keeping a lot of the core details about the app intact, since the students themselves were blindsided by this turn of events. 

Overall, the theme of disappointment, betrayal, or lack of trust in the government feels a lot more prevalent in this draft. It was always there for the Flint team, but with the events of the pandemic and the Supreme Court decision, it feels like something both teams have had to come to terms with much more deeply, and something that's fueling their desire with these apps to build resources that can help mitigate some of these failures. 

Would you say that the context for the play has changed? The stakes, the urgency, the risks for what the coders are working on?

While the immediate context for the play has changed in a few fundamental ways, the stakes, urgency, and risks for the coders are very similar to the previous iteration of this play. One thing that the past couple of years has made clear to me is the way that older generations are really failing Gen Z and leaving them a world in shambles; climate change, gun violence, environmental injustice, attacks on abortion care and LGBTQ+ rights are all issues that are creating increasingly inhospitable environments for this next generation. This was already true in 2020 but not necessarily as immediately apparent. So, while these stakes may feel more heightened or more urgent, the main struggle at the heart of the play is the same—what tools do teenagers have to engage with the world around them? How can they create positive change in a world that doesn't take them seriously?  

What do you want the audience to take away from HELLO, WORLD?

That teenage girls are amazing and can do more than most people give them credit for! Also, it’s worth thinking about what function these competitions serve. Their goal is to encourage young women to get involved in tech, which is great, but they do so by creating a competitive environment as opposed to encouraging these girls to collaborate and support each other. This focus on competition furthers the idea that there can only be one winner—-that there is room in this field (or any field) only for the most exceptional women and that you must, therefore, be in direct competition with other women for your spot. If they succeed, it means you’ve failed. What do we gain by pitting young women against each other like this? Both of these apps are good ideas and both of them could do an enormous amount of good—so why pick only one? Who gets to decide what is most important, whose need is greater? Why is this an all-or-nothing game? We’d like people to be thinking about those questions when they leave the play!

What’s next for Margot Connolly?
I'm currently working on a few new things! During the pandemic, I found myself learning to write for opera, a fascinating new form to discover, and wrote the libretto for a chamber opera called Juvenilia which is being performed as part of the Four Corners Ensemble’s Operation Opera this weekend. I'm currently working with composer Zachary Detrick on expanding that piece, which deals with the complicated relationship between the Brontë siblings and the childhood writings that were the foundation of their later works. I'm also in the very early stages of a play that explores the vibrant online communities that spring up around fanfiction and fan culture, and how ChatGPT may be infringing on those communities by scraping their work to train their language processing system. So, more science research in my future!

HELLO, WORLD is one of seven readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 22. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.       

Nelson Diaz-Marcano on clinical trials, birth control, women at risk, and LAS BORINQUEÑAS

Nelson Diaz-Marcano

Is there a way to measure the cost in human lives of medical breakthroughs? Does the number of lives saved by a breakthrough offset the lives harmed by the experiments that enabled it? Are we willing to revisit how unethical historical experiments were?

LAS BORINQUEÑAS, the hard-hitting new drama by Nelson Diaz-Marcano, confronts exactly these questions. The play derives its title from Borinquén, the aboriginal Taino name for the island of Puerto Rico, and tells two parallel stories: one about the American scientists who in the 1950s made the world-changing discovery that a pill could prevent conception, and the far less heroic story of how the clinical trial for the pill was conducted with the women of Puerto Rico.

LAS BORINQUEÑAS will have its first public reading at 3:00 PM on Thursday, June 1 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of the 2023 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free but reservations are encouraged.

We interviewed the playwright back in 2021 when the play had an invitation-only reading as part of that year’s First Light Festival. The interview below recaps some of those answers along with Nelson’s thoughts on what has changed — in the play and in the world.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Take us back to the origin of LAS BORINQUEÑAS. How did it start?

Years ago, as I started doing my research on the Puerto Rican revolt of 1951 for another play, I stumbled upon the details of the birth control mass trials that were conducted in Puerto Rico. While there are plenty of stories about medical negligence and abuse in Puerto Rico, this one fascinated me the most because the results of the experiments ultimately benefited the world. But whose world? Who got the most from these trials? Were the women rewarded for their bodies being used? What was the human cost of the birth control pill? Do good results excuse evil practices? Those questions kept percolating in my mind as I unfolded the history we were never told.

LAS BORINQUEÑAS is part of my life-goal project to expose the hidden/forgotten history of Puerto Rico through the celebration of those who lived it.

What kind of research did you do in writing the play?

Dr. Gregory Goodwin Pincus (seated at the table) and Dr. John Rock (pictured on the right). Source: Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research

I read dozens of academic articles about the trials, about John Rock, Gregory Pincus, Margaret Sanger, Katherine McCormick, the birth control movement and, in particular, the books The Birth of the Pill:  How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig and A Good Man, Gregory Goodwin Pincus: The Man, His Story, the Birth Control Pill by Leon Sperrof. I watched Ana María García’s 1982 documentary La Operación and spent hours watching stock footage from Puerto Rico and America from that time. And I talked to my grandmother and others who lived during the 50s and 60s to get a sense of how they felt and acted.

Did anything you discovered in your research surprise you?

I want to say yes, but sadly, very little surprised me due to the years I spent researching the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. The corruption, the lack of care for the native population, the scientific risks which cost lives — these have all been constant fixtures of that relationship. What surprises me — and always does — is the lives of the survivors after the event. How these women who got no rewards or recognition for their contribution continued raising their kids, taking care of their families, and lived full lives. I am continually surprised by the spirit of the survivors and their complete dedication to live as happily as they can. I wanted to show that in this play.

The clinical trial depicted in the play — testing the contraceptive pill Enovid in Puerto Rico in the 1950s — seems very problematic. What did the participants in this trial know about what they were taking and what effects to expect?

They didn’t know much. Some women thought these pills were part of a survey on family size, others were told these pills were an experimental contraceptive, but they got no specifics about any side effects or the real nature of the experiment. The demand for a contraceptive pill was high at the time, so women flocked to the trial thinking they would be safe. Little did they know the scientists were using them to find out what the actual side effects were and what needed to be tweaked in the formula to make it safe for consumption on the mainland. In other words, to create a better product they were providing pills that they knew could be toxic to these women without informing them of the risks.

Five Puerto Rican women are at the heart of your play; four participate in the trial. How did you decide the right number to have and how to differentiate the characters?

To be honest, there was no specific reason for the number of women. I wanted to create characters based on the women I grew up around in the late 80s and early 90s and their dynamic. While the men were “working,” the women were doing the house chores, trying to take care of the kids. Some of them had jobs, yet all of them were expected to do it all. The best part of their day was when they were able to steal moments for each other. Their conversations always went from religion to politics to whatever happened in the neighborhood that day. They knew everything, had an opinion about it all, but only had each other to decompress with as their men came like storms and changed the environment.

Two characters in the play have a secret extramarital gay relationship. How common was this in Catholic Puerto Rico in the 1950s? Why was this important for you to include?

The thing about queer history is that it’s always been common, we were just not as privy to it as we are today. This is especially true in heavily colonized communities where indoctrination through religion is fierce and brutal. You are not only afraid of the masters, but you are also afraid of the oppressed as they seek to please their masters. There’s always been people hiding in marriages, people being chastised for being too femme/boyish, people being condemned due to their sexuality, for not fitting the mold. I included it in this story because I believe love is the most pure emotion we all share, and even that is decided for them by men.

“Who can they love? How can they love? What are their duties to that love?” These are the questions each woman deals with in this play. The homosexual relationship explores a big aspect of that dilemma.

LAS BORINQUEÑAS had an invitation-only reading as part of the First Light Festival in March 2021. What have you changed in the play since then and why?

Mostly, the Gregory Pincus storyline [Biologist Gregory Pincus was co-inventor with gynecologist John Rock of the combined oral contraceptive pill]. One of the things we noticed was that while the women’s story was strong, the Pincus storyline lacked the same emotional power. This version aims to create an emotional anchor that connects the two pieces and shows the stakes everyone was dealing with. It also creates a less black and white narrative.

Dr. Edris Rice-Wray  (Photo: HenryLee Marlo/CC 3.0)

The play no longer includes John Rock or Margaret Sanger. The scientific storyline focuses on Pincus and Dr. Edris Rice-Wray, the medical director of the Puerto Rico Family Planning Association who conducted the clinical trials. How has this narrower focus helped you present the science in the play?

It has allowed me to simplify the scientific issues in a way that bolsters the pacing of the story but creates a path for people to go afterward and educate themselves about what happened. Not only in this instance but how in history Puerto Rico has been a scientific playground for questionable practices by USA scientists.

Why this play? Why now?

These women represent how most of the comforts of this world have been built on the backs of brown and black bodies. This play shows how much of a business the medical industry is and how colonies/poor countries are treated as experimental grounds for the more developed societies. This is very important to know and remember as we go through a pandemic that is killing black and brown people at a higher rate while they demand human rights.

What do you want the audience to take away from LAS BORINQUEÑAS?

Enovid Credit: G.D. Searle &Co./Pharmacia Company Credit

I want them to question where their comfort comes from. I want them to understand a  bit more about what colonization does to the countries that are supposed to benefit. I want them to realize that many of the things people enjoy in their lives were constructed on top of the lives of people of color. I want them to honor those lives. But more importantly, I want the audience to meet these women and take a little bit of their spirit and culture with them.

What discoveries have you made about the play and what you wanted to do in it during your rewriting?

That we have created a society where doing good, where creating miracles, where wanting to improve society, comes with a certain darkness. Even if you have the best intentions at the start, the games you have to play to be able to accomplish anything end up getting those intentions destroyed. Are the accomplishments necessary? Absolutely. Do we need to hurt people in the process? I don’t think so.

Is it your sense that anything has now changed in the world to give the play a different context?

Roe vs Wade has been struck. Books are being banned in America. We have openly bigoted people running for office again, but this time they are empowered. The more things have changed in the past year the more we have returned to the world where the women of LAS BORINQUEÑAS existed. 

Why is LAS BORINQUEÑAS the perfect title for this play?

Because this story is about them, not the trials. It’s about their lives and their dreams. It’s about those women who should be honored every day for their lives. It’s about getting them the recognition they deserve.

What’s next for Nelson Diaz-Marcano?

Keep on uplifting and developing Latine voices as part of the LatinX Playwrights Circle. Besides that, I’m working on a few other projects with the likes of The Road Theatre Company. I have a reading coming on June 15 with the Exquisite Corpse Company and after that — Off-Broadway? We manifest!

LAS BORINQUEÑAS is one of seven readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 22. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged.The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Sam Mueller on Wrestling, Being Nonbinary, the Corn Belt, and PIN.

Sam Mueller

“What would happen to a student who wanted to play high school sports who didn’t fit into either category of ‘girl’ or ‘boy’?” This is the dilemma Sam Mueller dramatizes in their wildly entertaining new play PIN. When nonbinary athlete Jo Wagner is kicked off their high school wrestling team, their longtime rival MJ McKinnon comes up with a plan to stage a guerrilla final match in a local barn. Local shock jocks, the principal, and their biology teacher all get in the act and the event grows in scope, joy, imagination, and complications.

PIN. will have its first public reading on Thursday, May 25 at 3:00 PM at the Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of the 2023 EST/Sloan First Light Festival. The reading is free but reservations are encouraged.

Sam smacked down as many questions as we could ask below.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Please tell us the story of how PIN. came to be.

Laura Jane Grace performing with Against Me! at 9:30 Club in Washington, DC on 10/13/17  (Photo courtesy of wojo4hitz/CC0)

PIN. probably started in the pit of a punk concert in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois in April of 2017 watching Laura Jane Grace, frontwoman of the band Against Me!, growl out songs to a visibly gender-nonconforming crowd. I left the venue that night having inhaled some embers that five years later kicked up into the full flame that became this play. It didn't fan into a fire until Thanksgiving 2021. I had been thinking about the safety of trans kids and looking over some recent legislation surrounding trans kids in high school sports. I wanted to make space for the trans-nonbinary kids who are often left out of these conversations because the understanding of trans identity in mainstream society can be incredibly binary. What would happen to a student who wanted to play sports who didn't fit into either category of "girl" or "boy"? Moreover, what would happen if that student had real advocates for their ability to not only survive but thrive? 

Why this play? Why now?

Because the coolest stories ever are found in a biology textbook and also right outside of your window right now. Because pro wrestling is also drag. Because you can't say gay in Florida schools. Because trans people cannot get their life-saving medical care. Because the changes we have to make in this country are so big it becomes overwhelming to the point of inaction and sometimes people just need to see it to know what's possible. Because being larger than life can feel so thrilling. Because there is nothing like the feeling of knowing and existing in your own expansiveness. 

 Is the story of the play based on an actual incident involving a nonbinary high school wrestler?

Yes and no. I read and listened to a lot of stories about transgender high school athletes in the creation of this play. All of those stories would end before I wanted this one to begin. I wanted to know what happens after the decisions are made and someone can no longer compete. I was interested in the fall out and the comeback. 

Everyone would love to have a biology teacher as charismatic, knowledgeable, and irascible as Mr. Rodgers. Is he based on anyone you read about or know?

My director, Lucky Stiff, actually said to me the other day "You wrote the advocate [trans kids] all wish we had in high school." I certainly didn't have a Tom Rodgers. Ironically, I hated biology in high school (I refused to dissect the frogs) and when it came time to choose a science to study further, I decided I would rather take chemistry instead. What I do have in my life are people who advocate the way that Rodgers does, with a dual foundation in knowledge and charisma. Bits and pieces of those people are found in Rodgers. 

Zuri, the lioness who sprouted a mane when her mate died in 2020, just died on May 3, 2023 at 19 (Photo; Topeka Zoo and Conservation Center)

You have Mr. Rodgers cite so many examples of nonbinary sexual differentiation in nature in his teaching sessions: clownfish, butterflies, lionesses, white-throated sparrows. Do you have a favorite?

I do not. I just tried to choose one. I can't do it. They have all actually taught me so much. I have a Leo moon though, so the lionesses have a slight edge if I had to choose. 

Are you now or have you ever been a wrestler?

Clip from YouTube video by Noah Frick-Alofs of Wrestlepocalypse XI, May 19, 2017. https://youtu.be/SibVWUL3Ci4

Okay. Hear me out. At Northwestern (my alma mater), there used to be a yearly event called Wrestlepocalypse (aka Pocs) and it would happen at the end of every May. I was a part of the student theater group that produced the event and for several years, I was the stage manager. This was less "writing down blocking and calling cues" and more "risk management". It is where my love of wrestling began and also never again in my life do I want to be responsible for more than a dozen twenty-somethings teaching each other how to do professional wrestling moves. Pocs forever, though. You haven't lived until you've been inside of a wrestling ring. 

How much real wrestling will your actors have to do onstage?

A lot! The radio DJs are spared from the deep physicality of wrestling, but the academics and the athletes? There's a whole tag team match! The athletes get to pivot between competition wrestling and professional wrestling, too, so there's that as well. 

People sometimes wonder why nonbinary people continue to live in states that are hostile to them. At one point in the play Jo is quite moving describing why they want to continue living in the “Corn Belt.” Have you spent any time in the Corn Belt? 

A map of the American Corn Belt (Map: Heitordp/CC0)

I have a very, very special place in my heart for the Corn Belt. I've spent a lot of time there. One of my favorite drives is from Illinois to Missouri. Once, I rode shotgun on an overnight drive from Chicago to St. Louis and when the sun was starting to rise, we were driving through thick, pink-tinted fog that seemed to go on forever. It made our skin look like it had a rosy glow to it. We were beautiful aliens. I felt like I was no longer on earth. It is a perfect memory. 

The footnotes you include in the script of the play demonstrate the considerable research you did about the biology of sexual differentiation. How do you imagine the footnotes could be incorporated into a stage production?

It depends, really. I feel like all of my answers would pale in comparison to a creative team's ideas. You can project them, you can attach a sound or light cue to them, you can make the floor beneath an audience vibrate every time they exist, you can pass out the script with footnotes to audience members who want to read along. All of these things tie into making the play more accessible, too. I make a note in the beginning of the play that says "Academia should be a playground. How else do we learn?" I've always thought about this play being in communication with designers and an audience, and with the footnotes, I made a space for other people to play if they want. 

I’ve never known anyone to be so impassioned about footnotes.

A sample of Sam’s references for PIN

The footnotes came from a desire to bring the art of writing a scientific peer-reviewed paper to the art of writing a play. What I love about the footnotes is they also ask "How do we peer-review plays? How do we tie plays together into a lineage of not only other plays but the innovations and understanding of the time the play was written? How does a play serve as an artifact of understanding, meant to be engaged with and built off of and all of those other beautiful things that scientific papers do?" I was a scholarship kid at an esteemed university; I often found that academia did not want me in a number of ways, but I LOVE learning. I love it SO much. This is also my way of reclaiming my own learning. 

When did you know you were a playwright? What playwrights have influenced you?

I knew I was a playwright in college when Laura Schellhardt, the head of the department and one of my earliest mentors, let me into one of her classes. She picked one of my first homework assignments as the example to read out loud in class and I remember thinking, "This is incredible. I kind of want to vomit. I might want to do this forever."

Taylor Mac teaches me a lot about imagination. The Bengsons teach me a lot about vulnerability and honesty and bravery. Nia Robinson teaches me a lot about deep love and concern and also joy. Paula Vogel teaches me a lot about catharsis. Antoinette Nwandu teaches me about the deliberate power of each individual word. I work a lot with undergraduates, and honestly writing better worlds for them, with all of their spark and teeth, is a huge influence on my work. 

You are a member of EST’s Youngblood program. What impact has being in Youngblood had on your playwriting?

Youngblood is a home. I get to listen to beautiful stories every Wednesday before other people get to know them; it's like having a front row seat to people's brilliance. These writers have also cooked for me and reminded me to drink more water and told me stories about their lives and showed me a kind of community-based love that is very hard to find because of how our society's priorities are ordered. RJ and Graeme have been beautiful champions of my work and my creative process. I'm trying not to miss it while I'm still a part of it. 

What’s next for Sam Mueller? 

On the playwriting front — I started a two-hander Western play about brothers on a hunt for a Bighorn sheep when I was in Wyoming on an artist residency at the Ucross Foundation this past February. On the personal front — I turn 30 the day after the First Light reading of PIN. I'm looking forward to ringing in a new chapter while also being loyal to my inner 13-year-old. And then hopefully, a lot of things I couldn't even dream up. 

Nikki Brake-Sillá on Science, Faith, Medical Transplants, and REWOMBED

Nikki Brake-Sillá

REWOMBED asks the provocative question: in a world where nothing is believed until it is replicated, when did science lose its faith? What roles science, risk, and faith play in personal decisions recur over several office visits between an uterine transplant candidate and her OBGYN in this compelling new drama.

The first reading of REWOMBED by Nikki Brake-Sillá will occur as part of the 2023 EST/Sloan First Light Festival on Thursday, May 18 at 3:00 PM. The reading is free but reservations are encouraged.

Learn more about REWOMBED in the following exchanges with Nikki.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

How did you come to write REWOMBED?

I wrote REWOMBED in 2020 after I read an announcement in PENN Medicine News that talked about the birth of Baby Benjamin, the first birth from the Uterus Transplantation for Uterine Factor Infertility (UNTIL) trial that started in 2017 at the University of Pennsylvania. I was immediately torn. It felt like doctors were playing God in a way that made me uncomfortable. Which got me thinking, WHY was I uncomfortable? I have two beautiful daughters, so it’s easy for me to sit in my seat of privilege and judge and question. What would it mean if the woman deciding to participate in this trial was someone who is deeply religious and believes, “For all those things My hand has made, And all those things exist,” Says the Lord. Isaiah 66:2 NKJV

What kind of research did you do to create the play? Did you speak with couples going through IVF? Did you interview doctors who work in this area?

Penn Medicine announcement of successful transplant (Photo credit: Penn Medicine)

I did extensive research before writing. I read journal and newspaper articles and watched a short film about Baby Benjamin. I have spoken to couples who have gone through the IVF process and am excited to interview doctors familiar with this procedure to answer more of my process-based questions.

Your main character Rachel is intensely religious. In fact, she is a pastor. She preaches and leads her congregation in prayer during the play. Why was it important to incorporate faith in God into the play?

There is so much faith in Science. Every day you put your faith in something. Just because you don’t name it capital ‘G’ God doesn’t mean it’s not divine. I find there is no room for scientists who believe in a higher power. I’m Christian, I’m a scientist and I believe in evolution. It’s not an either-or for me, yet some people have highjacked Christianity and their warped interpretations of it leave no room for grace, love, faith, or science.

Is religion important to you? Do you see a conflict between science and religion?

Artwork for ReWombed

Religion is important to me. I grew up in the church in North Carolina. That church was all hell and brimstone and fear. I read the Bible front to back three times before I graduated from high school. Because I wanted to be able to question and have discussions from a place of knowledge. As I got older, and through the help of my village, I now see God as someone whom I need to help me weather the storms I experience.  That’s why it’s important to me that Rachel is a woman of unwavering faith. A dear friend said, faith is a verb, and it will be tested. That’s my mantra throughout this play.

As we watch Rachel and her husband Isaiah go through the lengthy and stressful transplant and IVF process, we see the toll it can take on a relationship. How did you get such hard-won knowledge of what they experience?  

As a playwright, I am constantly gleaning information from my surroundings and relationships. I have also been married for almost 15 years, so there is a certain familiarity between couples who have that type of history. And I have a vivid imagination and am curious about how characters would handle situations that I find untenable. They are my very own What if?

When I google Nikki Brake-Sillá the first line that keeps coming up to describe you is “Nikki Brake-Sillá is a Black playwright and filmmaker with an invisible disability, who tried to check out of the hospital with her infant, A.M.A.”

You wrote a monologue called A.M.A. Against Medical Advice. Is this monologue about your own experience of medical bias? Did that experience influence the writing of REWOMBED? Care to say anything about your “invisible disability”? Do the characters in REWOMBED have this disability?

AHHHHH, good ol’ google. I did write A.M.A. from my first-hand experience after the birth of my second child. The way I was treated during both of my fourth trimesters has shaped all my subsequent work. The trauma that I faced during that process, me, a highly educated Black woman who is a strong self-advocate is the reason I write plays that deal with inherent medical bias and medical racism. My invisible disability is rheumatoid arthritis and interstitial lung disease. Autoimmune diseases love to buddy up. Because of my lung condition whenever I exert, I must use a portable oxygen concentrator. Without it, I become hypoxic, and can’t stop coughing, which isn’t a great look in these still COVID streets. Rachel’s invisible disability is Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH syndrome) which means she was born without a uterus.

What’s next for Nikki Brake-Sillá?

Artwork for Say It Ain’t So

What’s next? Well, I’m so glad you asked. Say it Ain’t So, the full-length play I’m co-producing with Revolution Shakespeare, will run from July 20 – 23, 2023 at Neighborhood House in Philadelphia. Say it Ain’t So weaves a tale of Sandra, an affluent Black mother, on the lam with her Deaf sister, Renny, after Sandra kills her husband. This familial play asks, “What do you pass on, and what should not be inherited?” Christina D. Eskridge is directing the play with Patrice Creamer as Director of Artistic Sign Language (DASL).

A.M.A. – Against Medical Advice was the impetus for The Fourth Trimester, an ARTisPHL/Knight Foundation-funded work that will provide six weeks of free group psychotherapy, devised theater workshop, childcare, and transportation for Black women and birthing parents, a program that will begin in September 2023.

And lots of naps.

Anyone can keep up with everything I do by subscribing to my newsletter.

REWOMBED is one of seven readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 22. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano on clinical trials, colonization, women at risk, and LAS BORINQUEÑAS

Nelson Diaz-Marcano

What is the cost in human lives of medical breakthroughs? On Thursday, March 25, the 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival hosted an invitation-only reading of LAS BORINQUEÑAS, the new play by Nelson Diaz-Marcano. The play derives its title from Borinquén, the aboriginal Taino name for the island of Puerto Rico, and tells two parallel stories: one about the American scientists who in the 1950s made the world-changing discovery that a pill could prevent conception, and the far less heroic story of how the clinical trial for the pill was conducted with the women of Puerto Rico. The playwright tells us more.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Take us back to the origin of LAS BORINQUEÑAS. How did it start?

Years ago, as I started doing my research on the Puerto Rican revolt of 1951 for another play, I stumbled upon the details of the birth control mass trials that were conducted in Puerto Rico. While there are plenty of stories about medical negligence and abuse in Puerto Rico, this one fascinated me the most because the results of the experiments ultimately benefited the world. But whose world? Who got the most from these trials? Were the women rewarded for their bodies being used? What was the human cost of the birth control pill? Do good results excuse evil practices? Those questions kept percolating in my mind as I unfolded the history we were never told.

LAS BORINQUEÑAS is part of my life-goal project to expose the hidden/forgotten history of Puerto Rico through the celebration of those who lived it.

What kind of research did you do in writing the play?

Dr. Gregory Goodwin Pincus (seated at the table) and Dr. John Rock (pictured on the right). Source: Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research

I read dozens of academic articles about the trials, about John Rock, Gregory Pincus, Margaret Sanger, Katherine McCormick, the birth control movement and, in particular, the books The Birth of the Pill:  How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig and A Good Man, Gregory Goodwin Pincus: The Man, His Story, the Birth Control Pill by Leon Sperrof. I watched Ana María García’s 1982 documentary La Operación and spent hours watching stock footage from Puerto Rico and America from that time. And I talked to my grandmother and others who lived during the 50s and 60s to get a sense of how they felt and acted.

Did anything you discovered in your research surprise you?

I want to say yes, but sadly very little surprised me due to the years I spent researching the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. The corruption, the lack of care for the native population, the scientific risks which cost lives — these have all been constant fixtures of that relationship. What surprises me — and always does — is the lives of the survivors after the event. How these women who got no rewards or recognition for their contribution continued raising their kids, taking care of their families, and lived full lives. I am continually surprised by the spirit of the survivors and their complete dedication to live as happily as they can. I wanted to show that in this play.

Dr. Edris Rice-Wray

Several of the characters in the play are based on actual historical figures: Margaret Sanger, Gregory Pincus, John Rock, Edris Rice-Wray. Not everything about them is appealing. How much of these characters reflect what they were like in real life and how much is your invention?

While I took some liberties with their characterization due to this being a narrative work, I didn’t change much of the ideologies they express or the relationships they had with each other.

The clinical trial depicted in the play — testing the contraceptive pill Enovid in Puerto Rico in the 1950s — seems very problematic. What did the participants in this trial know about what they were taking and what effects to expect?

They didn’t know much. Some women thought these pills were part of a survey on family size, others were told these pills were an experimental contraceptive, but they got no specifics about any side effects or the real nature of the experiment. The demand for a contraceptive pill was high at the time, so women flocked to the trial thinking they would be safe. Little did they know the scientists were using them to find out what the actual side effects were and what needed to be tweaked in the formula to make it safe for consumption on the mainland. In other words, to create a better product they were providing pills that they knew could be toxic to these women without informing them of the risks.

Five Puerto Rican women are at the heart of your play; four participate in the trial. How did you decide the right number to have and how to differentiate the characters?

To be honest, there was no specific reason for the number of women. I wanted to create characters based on the women I grew up around in the late 80s and early 90s and their dynamic. While the men were “working,” the women were doing the house chores, trying to take care of the kids. Some of them had jobs, yet all of them were expected to do it all. The best part of their day was when they were able to steal moments for each other. Their conversations always went from religion to politics to whatever happened in the neighborhood that day. They knew everything, had an opinion about it all, but only had each other to decompress with as their men came like storms and changed the environment.

Two characters in the play have a secret extramarital gay relationship. How common was this in Catholic Puerto Rico in the 1950s? Why was this important for you to include?

The thing about queer history is that it’s always been common, we were just not as privy to it as we are today. This is especially true in heavily colonized communities where indoctrination through religion is fierce and brutal. You are not only afraid of the masters, but you are also afraid of the oppressed as they seek to please their masters. There’s always been people hiding in marriages, people being chastised for being too femme/boyish, people being condemned due to their sexuality, for not fitting the mold. I included it in this story because I believe love is the most pure emotion we all share, and even that is decided for them by men.

“Who can they love? How can they love? What are their duties to that love?” These are the questions each woman deals with in this play. The homosexual relationship explores a big aspect of that dilemma.

Enovid Credit: G.D. Searle &Co./Pharmacia Company Credit

Why this play? Why now?

These women represent how most of the comforts of this world have been built on the backs of brown and black bodies. This play shows how much of a business the medical industry is and how colonies/poor countries are treated as experimental grounds for the more developed societies. This is very important to know and remember as we go through a pandemic that is killing black and brown people at a higher rate while they demand human rights.

What do you want the audience to take away from LAS BORINQUEÑAS?

I want them to question where their comfort comes from. I want them to understand a  bit more about what colonization does to the countries that are supposed to benefit. I want them to realize that many of the things people enjoy in their lives were constructed on top of the lives of people of color. I want them to honor those lives. But more importantly, I want the audience to meet these women and take a little bit of their spirit and culture with them.

Why is LAS BORINQUEÑAS the perfect title for this play?

Because this story is about them, not the trials. It’s about their lives and their dreams. It’s about those women who should be honored every day for their lives. It’s about getting them the recognition they deserve.

The 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival ran from February 25 through March 29 and featured readings of nine new plays. Most of the readings were open to the public for free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.

Phaedra Michelle Scott on activism, dramaturgy, intersectionality, and GOOD HAIR

Phaedra Michelle Scott

Do issues of race, class, and gender intersect more visibly anywhere than with Black hair? On March 29 at 3:00 PM the EST/Sloan Project will end the 2021 First Light Festival with the first public reading of GOOD HAIR by Phaedra Michelle Scott. GOOD HAIR explores the science of Black hair by following the stories of three trios of women through three different time periods. The playwright has lots more to tell.

(Rich Kelley interview)

Where did the idea for GOOD HAIR come from?

I have always been interested in telling a story that centered around a natural hair journey, and how deeply personal that can be. I was inspired by the news—specifically, the story of Andrew Johnson who in 2018 was forced to cut his locks in order to participate in a wrestling match or he would have to forfeit. I thought—what other teenager is told to alter their appearance to play a game? Why is it that Black hair is policed in a way that does not happen to his white peers? I was also inspired by my own natural hair journey and the stories of Black women around me as we embarked on learning how to understand our hair.

Madame C. J. Walker

What research did you do in writing the play?

I am a huge history fan, so I spent a lot of time reading a bunch of books—Hair Story by Ayana D. Byrd, biographies of Annie Turnbo Malone and Sarah Breedlove (later known as Madame C. J. Walker); my friends who have had natural hair journeys, hairdressers, dramaturg Tatiana Godfrey, and my family. It has been a lot of conversations and independent research.

Why this play? Why now?

Hair discrimination has been a reality for many Black folks, and it wasn’t until 2019 with The Crown Act in California that this injustice has been addressed legally. New York City also has its own anti-discrimination laws based on hair that went into effect in 2019. The fact that this issue is gaining more traction, and that it deeply effects the school life and work life of so many Black people goes to show that we are only in the beginning stages of addressing this; so it makes sense to focus on a play like this now.

The play tells the stories of three trios of women in different times. Why did you choose this way of telling the story of GOOD HAIR, rather than, say, telling the stories of three of the same women at different times?

Two timelines are set in the 20th and 21st centuries, while one is set in a fantasy universe. I wanted to show the range of how hair care for Black women has evolved through science, changing standards of beauty, while also addressing how easy it is to want to change yourself in order to be accepted. It was important to me to have a lot of perspectives, because I genuinely have no answers or solutions. I am interested in pitting different ideologies against each other. I also wanted to write an “athletic” play for Black and Brown actors, one where they have the opportunity to flex those artistic muscles.

Annie Turnbo Malone

GOOD HAIR features one professor who has given a Ted Talk style lecture on Black women’s hair on YouTube and two entrepreneurs who have created and marketed hair products for Black women. Are any of these characters inspired by real women?

Yes! Pretty much every character is a hodgepodge of people I know in real life, of stories I have picked up, and people directly ripped from history—most specifically, Madame C. J. Walker and Annie Malone.

Do you sense any progress in society’s attitude toward how Black women wear their hair? Where are we now and where do we need to be?

Of course, there has been progress, and, of course, there has not been nearly enough. While this play focuses specifically on women of color and hair, there is a whole other conversation about cultural appropriation that this work does not even address. Personally, I am happy that it’s much easier to get natural hair care products at Target or by shopping online, but there is still a long road ahead in terms of becoming a truly anti-racist society, and the conversation about hair is just a part of it.

On your website, you write that your work “lies at the intersection between history, Afrofuturism, and activism.” Is there an activist component to GOOD HAIR? What do you want the audience to take away and do after watching your play?

Poster for the Crown Act — Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair —https://www.thecrownact.com/

I hope that the play inspires people to do their own research and learn more about the complicated history of Black hair. I hope that by presenting so many perspectives of women of color that it further affirms that Black women are not a monolith, and that the truth of the matter is that intersectionality is complicated, and it is our duty to learn and understand the nuances of identity.

You are a playwright and a dramaturg. Do you have to turn off the dramaturg when you are writing?

Absolutely!! I’ve had to train myself to not edit as I write, and to simply let the story come out and then put my dramaturgical brain on it. Thankfully, I have developed a way of working that helps me. I tend to underwrite, and then as I do more research and think about the overall story, I add and inject more specificity. Overall, I think they work well together, because I have the tools to understand dramatic structure, and I can inject my dramaturgical creativity into my writing. I also love dramaturgs, so it’s especially fun to work with one as a playwright. 

When did you know you were a playwright?

To tell the truth, I became a playwright right after my sister passed away. I was a dramaturg for a while, and after she passed I needed to find a way to express myself, so I turned to the medium I was most familiar with: playwriting.

Have you written any other science-related plays?

I love science fiction and fantasy, and I tend to write plays that involve time somehow, which is why there are three intersecting timelines. This is my first science-related play, and I had a lot of fun finding my way into it that makes the science accessible to me (and hopefully everyone else, haha).

What’s next for Phaedra Michelle Scott?

More writing! I have been fortunate to have the support of EST’s Youngblood, Pipeline Theater Company, as well as a few other writing projects. I am a writer for an upcoming roleplaying game by a Swedish game company, Helmgast, where I am writing the mechanics for creating intersectional characters, which has been a fun way to stretch my creative muscles.

The 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.

Jake Brasch on alcoholism, mountains, Alzheimer’s, and THE RESERVOIR

Jake Brasch

Can brain exercises stave off dementia? On Monday, March 22, at 4:00 PM the EST/Sloan First Light Festival  presents the first public reading (free on Zoom) of THE RESERVOIR, Jake Brasch’s new play about a young writer who, struggling with alcoholism and memory loss, finds unexpected bonds with his quirky grandparents. The playwright has lots more to tell.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

How did THE RESERVOIR come to be?

This play has been trying to fight its way out of me for years. When I got the commission, there was no turning back. 

I set out to explore Alzheimer’s Disease and alcoholism, diseases that have plagued my family for many moons. Along the way, I discovered I was writing a love letter to my grandparents. 

You describe Josh, your main character, as 22 years old in 2014-2015. “A queer, neurotic, lost soul. Dropout. Alcoholic. Wannabe writer. A white Jew with Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Nebraskan roots.” Dare I ask how much of your play is autobiographical? Or would it be better to ask how much is not?

You got me!

Indeed, this is a very personal piece. Too personal? Maybe! There were definitely “WHY THE HELL AM I DOING THIS?!” moments. But for the most part, I found strength in writing into this painful chapter of my life. I’m a fundamentally different person than I was seven years ago and it felt empowering to remember that. 

That being said, the play is not strictly autobiographical. The constraints of the commission and the needs of the piece steered me away from my experience. I also took some creative license to protect my heart and my family. It feels important to be very clear about this: Josh’s story is not my story. A brilliant friend of mine recently wrote, “Most of us need a degree of artifice to say what we really think.” Paradoxically, I found that untethering Josh’s story from my own gave me permission to tell the truth. 

Much of the science in this play has to do with the concept of Cognitive Reserve and how it might be helpful in preventing or delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s. What kind of research did you do in writing this play? 

Figure illustrates how cognitive reserve develops over a lifespan. Figure courtesy of Frontiers of Psychology. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01814/full

I went on a deep dive into medical journal land. The more I read, the more I discovered how little we know about Alzheimer’s, specifically about how we might stave off its symptoms. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. People want to believe that all they have to do is play tennis, solve crossword puzzles, and memorize a list of our nation’s Vice Presidents, and all will be well. Yes, there are certain lifestyle factors that may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, but there is no formula, no proven regimen, no sure way to protect yourself from the disease.

Bleak? Oh yeah. But also, ultimately, freeing. We simply cannot know what lies ahead. Josh’s revelation in the play mirrors what I discovered in my research: the best way to protect oneself against the onset of Alzheimer’s is to lead a present, full, joyous, active, inquisitive, open, and loving life. 

Have your grandparents had the chance to read your play? How did they react?

Oh, how I wish I could share this with them.

Jake and his grandmother

Both of my maternal grandparents passed away a few years ago after battles with Alzheimer’s. My paternal grandfather died this year of complications from COVID-19. 

My paternal grandmother is in a memory care facility. She’s mostly nonverbal at this point and doesn’t seem to recognize me. I miss her more than I can say. If she were still herself, I’m guessing she would request a paper copy of the play to litter with brilliant, scathing, and hilarious notes in red colored pencil. I’d like to think she’d be both horrified and proud.

What do you want your audience to understand about the nature of alcoholism and the current treatment options for coping with it?

Addiction is brutal. Being inside of the disease of alcoholism was the scariest experience of my life. I wanted so badly to get out from under it, but the harder I tried to escape, the worse it got. At some point, I had to accept defeat and get help. For anyone going through it, don’t try to go it alone. I’m here. We’re here. Recovery is the foundation my life has been built upon and I wouldn’t have it any other way. As impossible as it may seem, there’s a lighter life on the other side.

Jewish music and themes run through many of your plays. What has being a Jew meant to you?

Being a Jew has meant a lot to me. Much to unpack here!

My father, a fervent atheist, insisted I attend way too much religious school, which we can attribute to good old-fashioned Jewish guilt. I have at least an hour and a half of Hebrew chanting memorized, but I can’t say I know what any of it means. I know what we do, but I don’t know why! It’s just what we do! And I’ve come to love it! Plus great food and ancestral trauma! I think I’ll probably do the same thing to my poor children! 

In all seriousness, as I’ve become a spiritual person over the last few years, I’ve done a lot of thinking and writing about my Jewish roots. My faith today feels decidedly Jewish: I’m more concerned with what I do than what I believe.

You set your play in Colorado? Why Colorado?

Rocky Mountains outside Denver (Photo: Jake Brasch)

Because Colorado is awesome, bro! Party! Powder! Snowboarding! Sick!!!

I’m a proud Denverite, born and raised. The year I got sober, the mountains were there for me. Every time I looked west, I felt so delightfully small.  Mother Nature gave me breathing room and I’m forever grateful to her. I hope that’s in the play. 

Have you written any other science-related plays?

This is my first full-length with a science bent. I’ve written two other shorts for the EST/Sloan Project. One was about our national feral pig problem. The other just so happens to be debuting in the next couple of weeks on the brand new Youngblood Podcast (shameless plug)! It’s called Endogamy and it’s about Ashkenazi Judaism and genetics.  

What’s next for Jake Brasch?

Dinner! I’m making a chicken tagine with an olive and rosemary sourdough boule and a shaved fennel salad. After that, bedtime. And after that, here’s hoping for a lifetime of climbing mountains, telling stories, and basking in the sunlight of the spirit. 

The 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.

Laura Maria Censabella on animal intelligence, sexism in science, ageism, and BEYOND WORDS

Laura Maria Censabella (Photo: Jeff Colen)

How much do we really know about the intelligence of our fellow creatures? On Thursday, March 18 at 3:00 PM the 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival will present the first reading (by invitation only) of BEYOND WORDS, the new play by Laura Maria Censabella. The play dramatizes the achievements and travails of Irene Pepperberg, the scientist responsible for breakthrough communications experiments with parrots, especially with Alex, the African Grey parrot she worked with for thirty years and chronicled in her books, Alex & Me and The Alex Studies. The playwright tells us more.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Take us through how BEYOND WORDS came to be.

Dr. Irene Pepperberg with Alex (Photo: David Carter)

I heard Dr. Irene Pepperberg’s beautiful monologue about her 30-year relationship with her African Grey parrot research subject Alex on The Moth podcast while I was working on my play Paradise.  In the way that always happens when you’re struggling with one play, I thought to myself I would love to write a play about Irene and Alex, that play would be so much easier and more fun.  I mean who hasn’t longed to communicate meaningfully with an animal?  To my great delight the Columbia biologist I was consulting with on Paradise, Dr. Stuart Firestein knew Irene and I asked him for an introduction.  Of course, actually writing the play was not easy!

Your play is unusual in chronicling the life and work of a living scientist. How closely did you work with Dr. Irene Pepperberg in writing the play? Has she seen each draft? Many of the scenes are deeply personal. Did you have any disagreements about what to include?

Irene read one draft of the play to vet the science—that is the extent of her oversight per our contract.  When she hears the newest draft of the play on March 18th, she will once again give notes about the science.  But before Irene gave me legal permission to write the story of her life, I had already written her a detailed letter about why I thought I was the one to write her story.  We then met for lunch in Cambridge to talk about the project.  After she gave me verbal permission to go ahead and I received a Sloan grant, I spent days in her lab observing her work with her birds.  I had already read many of her scientific writings and had detailed questions for her so she saw that I was attentive to the facts.  Additionally, before giving permission, she attended a workshop of my play Paradise which was presented at Underground Railway/Central Square Theater (prior to its world premiere there), and she liked it.  I’m sure she also spoke to Dr. Firestein about me.  In other words, she vetted me.  She learned that I completely believed in her scientific enterprise and that I am an advocate for women’s untold stories.  I told her, however, that I would have to write her faults as well as her strengths. Would she be up to that scrutiny?  Irene loves the theatre and she is no novice when it comes to what makes a true and good play. She agreed but I believe she also knew that I would do everything possible to represent her in her full humanity.

Dr. Stuart Firestein

Irene and I also had other emotional connections. I grew up in Brooklyn and Queens as did Irene.  Mine was a working-class family that did not have educational opportunities and yet I wound up with an Ivy League education as did Irene.  Like Irene, I had a parakeet when I was young that I trained and cared for deeply and that I knew possessed intelligence.  Like Irene, I have a parent who suffered from PTSD brought on by World War II.  And like Irene I work at a university where I have given my heart and soul but where there is no path to tenure and therefore perpetual economic uncertainty.

Why this play? Why now?

If ever there was a time for science plays, it is now. We’re continuing to live through the tragic effects of science denial with our COVID pandemic. Irene’s life’s work is another wake-up story: the animals we live among are feeling, intelligent beings. They possess forms of intelligence that we don’t. We are all a part of this living web of consciousness, a loss of one form of intelligence is a loss for us all.  Every day 150 species of plants and animals go extinct due to human activities. We have damaged and continue to damage entire ecosystems. What will it take for us to wake up? Floods, hurricanes, and ice storms of Biblical proportions beset us and we still choose to ignore the signs. The earth and animals are speaking to us—we just don’t listen.

You have decided to keep this first reading of BEYOND WORDS private. What concerns factored into that decision?

This is a play that calls for physicality from the actor playing the parrot Alex, which will call for highly abstracted bird movements created with the actor and a choreographer. We can’t convey that on Zoom. Additionally, there are a lot of shifts in time and place very quickly and we also wondered how that would translate in a reading. We wanted to protect this next step in the play’s development.  However, we do have an invited audience to test the play with.

Poster for the West Coast premiere of Paradise at Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles in 2019

Another play of yours, PARADISE, has also received an EST/Sloan commission and has had productions in Cambridge, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. How did the development process for that play differ from the development process for BEYOND WORDS?

First Light is the very first reading of BEYOND WORDS outside of the EST Playwrights Unit where I bring in drafts of my work to be heard around the table and to be critiqued. I also run the Unit. It’s a safe environment composed of caring and incisive professional playwrights where we share work in its early stages. At a certain point, the play must leave that room, and I was grateful to get Linsay Firman’s and Graeme Gillis’s (co-artistic directors of EST Sloan) input on the play, and then my director Melissa Crespo’s thoughts. Beyond that, it hasn’t had any formal development. This first reading for EST/Sloan with professional actors is the beginning of that process.

In addition to working with Dr. Pepperberg, what other research did you do in writing the play?

Dr. Diana Reiss with dolphin

I’m grateful to the animal scientists I spoke to such as Diana Reiss, dolphin expert, who was generous with her time, the science, her perceptions of Irene, and her own theatre background.  I then read, read and read—anything connected to animal science or animal behavior, including many scientific experiments in scientific journals. I also interviewed Elizabeth Hess, the author of Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. She helped me think about the entire animal behavior field in provocative new ways. And of course, Irene was always there to ask questions via email.

One of the scientists in the play, Howard Towers, does not get a very flattering portrayal. How do you think he’ll react to his characterization?

Luckily, Howard Towers is not a “real” scientist.  All the scientists in the play are fictions with the exception of Erich Jarvis who is presented briefly and those are not his actual words.  Even Irene is a fiction in that she is my Irene.  However, I strove constantly to tell the scientific and emotional truth of her life.

As for the Howards in the world of science (and there are plenty of them): they have had years of accolades and exponential advantages not accorded to women scientists and scientists of color. If they recognize some negative aspects of themselves in the character of Howard, that would be a good thing although I believe they are psychologically defended from introspection or things would have changed a long time ago!

By the way, I like the character of Howard. Not in the sense that I want to hang out with him but in the way that he makes an excellent stage character. He’s relentless and charismatic in what he will do to get what he wants. He’s also, I hope, complex. He’s at a stage in his life where he is looking back and just barely allowing himself to wonder what he lost and what he damaged to get where he is. Not just by affecting other people’s careers but by affecting and damaging animals.

Dr. Pepperberg’s work involved so many breakthroughs in our understanding of the intelligence of birds and how they communicate. What did you discover as you wrote the play that surprised you the most? Was it about the science or about what’s involved in being a scientist?

Dr. Irene Pepperberg with Alex and his colored shapes (Photo: Jeff Topping)

I already knew about the challenges a bench scientist faces from my play Paradise so the uncertainties in the life of a scientist—and the parallels with being an artist in terms of a scientist’s creativity—were familiar to me.  However, Irene’s story brought home the point of how contemptuously scientists can treat one another, especially when a colleague’s discoveries contradict their own, and the far-reaching repercussions such enmity can have on the ability to do one’s work.

One of the ongoing arguments in the play is whether Dr. Pepperberg’s close relationship with Alex undercuts her scientific findings. Where do you stand on this?

In this instance, when we’re talking about a helpless captive animal, I come down on the side of love—bearing in mind, of course, that love can cloud our judgment. However, my argument in the play and the argument of Irene’s life’s work is that she had enough outside controls and non-biased observers verifying her work. Also, for many years she treated Alex like a colleague and was completely unsentimental. It was only in the later years of Alex’s life that the emotional bond deepened so that he became the great love of her life. To be clear, her work has continued with other birds, birds that she has not had such an intense bond with, and in many cases, they have exceeded what Alex achieved.  However, there are still some scientists who deny Irene’s groundbreaking accomplishments and that is what made this such a rich play to write.

You mention the organization HONOR ROLL! in your bio.  What is HONOR ROLL!?

HONOR ROLL! is an action and advocacy group for women+ playwrights over 40. I’m sure you’ve heard the dire statistics about how few new plays by women are produced. As of the last count, the portion of produced plays by women is still under 25% and even lower for trans women and women of color. Although things are getting better, and numbers are slowly rising, experienced women playwrights like myself and others are now encountering ageism. Denied a seat at the table when we were younger, we are advocating for a seat at the table now that we have lived and really have something to say—and the craft to say it with.

What’s next for Laura Maria Censabella?

I just finished writing the polish for the film version of Paradise. I am also in the early stages of researching a new play partly based on my aunt who was also my godmother. She was severely disabled and had approximately 90 surgeries in her lifetime. At a certain point, against the wishes of the family, she signed up to have 12 more so that she could walk down the aisle unassisted at her son’s wedding. I want to tell the story of how she was infantilized in a close-knit Italian family, how she was cut off from disability activism and had to go it alone, and how her life changed all of us.

The 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.

Bonnie Antosh on aye-aye muses, conjuring with Shakespeare, inheritance, and LEMURIA

Bonnie Antosh

How does the behavior of researchers mirror the animals they are studying? On Wednesday, March 10 at 3:00 PM the EST/Sloan First Light Festival will present the first public reading (free on Zoom) of LEMURIA, the new play by Bonnie Antosh that asks the question: in the animal kingdom and in our own, how does  a queen pass the crown to the next queen? Imagine, if you will, a queer King Lear in a North Carolina lemur lab. The playwright has more to tell us.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

You describe LEMURIA as “an inheritance drama about dominance, queer Southern scientists, academic lineage, sex, and – yes – lemurs.” Take us back to the play’s first formative days. Which of those themes came first and how did the play come to be?

The first seed was "King Lear plus lemurs,” which stuck with me because it’s (obviously) irreverent and felt risky, in a good way. 

I took a Primatology class as a distribution requirement in college, and I walked away with this abiding curiosity about lemurs and female-dominant species. When a dominant female ring-tail is sick or dying, young females will battle for control over the troop. So I started imagining the Lear archetype with a queen, Regan and Goneril as lemurs – and then as academics who study lemurs – and then also as exes. And that was pretty much that. 

Left: Jade Anouka as Hotspur in the St Ann’s Warehouse production of Shakespeare's Henry IV in 2015.(Photo © Pavel Antonov). Right:  Janet McTeer as Petruchio in Phyllida Lloyd's free Shakespeare in the Park production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Delacorte Theater in 2016.(Photo © Joan Marcus)

As an actress, you seem to have specialized in Shakespearean roles. Has this influenced how you create characters or write dialogue?

Completely. When I first came up with this idea, I was hunting for a science-driven story that might fit the structure of a Shakespearean or Tudor inheritance drama, but with Southern women centered as the old power and the rivals for new power. I’ve enjoyed playing male characters, watched women play many of the Big Classical Roles – Jade Anouka as Hotspur and Janet McTeer as Petruchio were particularly revelatory. At the same time, modern artists should be able to embody that epic ambition, lust, and tactical maneuvering while playing modern women. 

An aye-aye photographed at night in the wild in Madagascar (Photo: Frank Vassen)

Why lemurs?

A question that haunts me day and night! On a superficial level, some lemurs, like aye-ayes, are cute in a way that’s also a bit freaky. A little demonic? Do you know what I mean? Certain lemurs have this energy of the goth kids who got picked last in Nature’s Gym Class, but who’ve become masters of adaptation as a result. So I guess… I did this for love. 

You set the play in eastern North Carolina. Any significance to that setting?

The Eastern Piedmont of North Carolina – especially the university-dense area known at the Research Triangle – is one of many, many centers of Southern intellectualism and activism. I’m excited for audiences to walk away from my plays with a more realistic sense of the cultural multiplicity that exists in both Carolinas, where I’m from. 

Also, Durham is the IRL home of the Duke Lemur Center, the largest center for strepsirrhine primate research outside of Madagascar. I was hoping to take advantage of a treasure in my own backyard. 2020 had other plans!

What research did you do to prepare to write the play? Did you use a consultant?

Even from afar, I’ve been grateful to be able to interview some of the DLC staff, researchers from around the country, primatologists, and anthropologists while constructing this very fictional institution of LemurLab. Dr. Patricia Chapple Wright’s gloriously-titled For the Love of Lemurs provided context on fieldwork in Madagascar, where lemurs are endemic, and on primate research over multiple decades. I’ve also spoken to academics and writers about intellectual lineage and the desire to be “claimed” by mentors or proteges in the arts. I had and have incredible mentors as a playwright, so the experience of idolizing someone so much that you can barely speak actual, intelligible words to them was – embarrassingly easy to tap into while writing this script. 

In your play, the lemurs are very expressive and one even converses with one of the scientists. Was this your original concept or something that evolved? How do you imagine this happening on stage?

I’ve always pictured the lemur character, Cordelia, as a gorgeous, intricate puppet who’s voiced and manipulated by a visible actor. It would have been a tragedy to write this play with no lemurs onstage! Can you imagine? 

Lemur Catta (Photo: Leila Adolphsen)

In retrospect, a lot of scientists I interviewed this summer shared a desire to be able to converse with lemurs for a day, to be able to ask how to make the animals' environments more enriching or their participation in the research process clearer. Thematically, Cordelia needed to be able to discuss aging and power with Anabelle, the director of LemurLab: Cordelia is the Fool to Anabelle’s Lear. But in writing, I discovered that I didn’t want those conversations to be “magical." They needed to come at a cost for Anabelle, who is starting to question the trustworthiness of her own mind. 

Why this play? Why now?

This past year has been full of horrors, but – at least for me – nature is a source of wonder that cannot be exhausted.

Remember as a kid how curious you felt about animals? Just ‘cause. We don’t necessarily allow ourselves to access that same level of curiosity in adulthood. 

This play is obviously about the threat of death or extinction, but it’s also full of stage pleasures: flirtations and battles and puppets. It’s about chosen families. It’s about the choice to devote your life – sometimes insanely – to the survival and evolution of a creature you’ve become obsessed with. Theater people will be able to relate to that devotion that borders on obsession. 

Winifred at one week, an aye-aye born at the Duke Lemur Center in 2020 (Photo: Jenna Browning) https://lemur.duke.edu/winifred/

What’s next for Bonnie Antosh? 

This is hard to admit, but I did not get to chill with one single lemur during the writing of this play. The lemurs don’t even care: they’re such cruel mistresses!

Still, I’ll go on some manner of celebratory pilgrimage, as soon as public safety allows. 

The 2021  EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.

AJ Clauss on stolen bodies, erotic medical textbooks, “writing the world we want to see,” and HENRY MAKES A BIBLE

AJ Clauss

On Monday, March 1 at 3:00 PM, the 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival will present the first public reading (free on Zoom) of HENRY MAKES A BIBLE, the new play by AJ Clauss. The play dramatizes the little-known story of the creation in disease-infested London in 1858 of the world’s most famous medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy, with text by 31-year-old medical wunderkind Henry Gray and 360 dazzling woodcuts by his artistically gifted medical colleague, 27-year-old Henry Vandyke Carter. To learn more, let’s hear from the playwright.

(Interview by Rich Kelley)

Where did the idea for HENRY MAKES A BIBLE come from?

I used to go to the Strand bookstore on Sundays and one afternoon I was holding a copy of this medical textbook. This copy was like the 86th edition, very college-vibes, and it cost three dollars. But I couldn’t stop flipping through the pages to get to the next drawing and the next. They really are so stunning. This led me into some research on anatomical illustrations in the 1800s. That’s when I learned the book was made by Henry and Henry and I asked them out on a date. They both said yes.

What kind of research did you do?

I relied heavily on Ruth Richardson’s Death, Dissection, and the Destitute which is an incredibly wholesome book on the underbelly of Victorian London. I’m also grateful for the research of Bill Hayes, Mike Sappol, and the Wellcome Library (who have Henry Carter’s journals from most of his life).

Henry Gray

My research focused on how the book would have been made and how they got the bodies. That’s really the beating heart of this play, the bodies. London had just passed in 1834 the New Poor Law (like, omg) which was basically a big middle finger from the rich. And this was just after The Anatomy Act (1832), which allowed for bodies from the “poor class” to be sold to doctors, anatomists, schools, etc. Their argument was that the contributions of these bodies would benefit all of mankind, and they did!! However, we don’t even know their names. When you look at Gray’s Anatomy, you are looking at the insides of an actual person who was sold to either provide bread for their family, or simply because they couldn’t afford a funeral (so expensive back then!). So, this book is a burial ground. The global infrastructure of anatomy was supplied by people who were starving and working themselves to death. A tale as old as time, I suppose.

What did you discover about what seems to have been a complicated relationship between Gray and Carter? Your play makes some decisions about the sexual preferences of the lead characters. Are those based on your research into their lives?

A few people have asked me that. First, let’s just acknowledge that history is told through a heterosexual lens where hetero folks are dramatized all the time as lovers and we don’t question the magic or the romance. When we dramatize a queer relationship, it’s like, wait, were they really though? Where’s the proof? I guess my proof is that queer people have always been around and have always been written out, especially in this era, thanks to the primarily cis-white-male-heterosexual gatekeepers of history. Because of this, we’ve had centuries of trying to find ourselves in the cracks of stories because of how secret and hidden our queer ancestors had to be.

Henry Vandyke Carter, self-portrait, 1870

In Carter’s journals, there’s no doubt that Henry Gray is his best friend and his biggest threat. I’m sorry, that’s hot! Carter also admits to burning journals that have stories he’s ashamed of, he keeps a calling card bookmarked in his journal from a guy he met in Paris, and he says all the time his mind wanders from religion. I’m recalling one line in particular, “What manner of Man am I?”

As a queer writer, I love the challenge of justifying why a seemingly non-queer person is actually a little queer, or a lot queer, because we write the world we want to see. And if that’s uncomfortable for a historian, or for anyone, that’s awesome.

The two Henrys are often quite funny. Is there evidence in letters, diaries, whatever, that Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter were this witty?

Thank you for saying that! So (spoiler) everything Henry Gray wrote was actually burned. That was part of my intrigue in writing this: that I would have breadcrumbs of a historical narrative and a lot of dark empty rooms to sit inside and figure out how they got from crumb to crumb. We do, however, have journals from Henry Carter, tons, such a great writer, some of his words are in the play, but he wasn’t funny at all! Which is even funnier. He was the brooding artist we can all identify with, so much to give, so cute, and so worried it’s all going to be for nothing.

I knew when I started this play that it was going to be very out of my comfort zone, as I needed to learn so much about language from a region and time far away from my middle-American roots. I wanted to find a rhythm that moved as fast as Henry Gray did (he was practically running St. George’s Hospital by the age of 28) and so I found a home in using banter as a birthright. It doesn’t matter, rich or poor, the wit became a communal love language.

Poster for Henry Makes a Bible

Much of the enduring appeal of the book Gray’s Anatomy is due to Carter’s painstakingly detailed woodcuts, all based on his own research from doing dissections. Do you plan on using any of his illustrations in your production?

Oh I’d love to! There are three scenes where the play describes the walls covered with his sketches, and that’s open to interpretation, but I’d love to see as much of his work as possible on stage. He portrays people with such grace. Even when their skin is off and their entrails are spilling out, he tilts their heads in a way that just feels nice. Calm. Home.

You include characters in the play from London’s lower classes -- the Little Boy and Grace the factory worker -- people we could say were exploited by Gray and Carter as they used for dissection the bodies of people who died impoverished. Why was it important to include these characters?

I wanted to give a life to the person on the page. The person whose heart changed the way we have understood hearts anatomically for generations, I wanted to give them a name. Her name is Grace.

As you did your research for the play, did you discover anything that surprised you?

I was surprised how erotic anatomical drawings are! Wowee! At the time, there was such a fascination at getting to see the inside of a body. It was brand new. There was so much bondage, and beautiful scenes, and you just can’t deny this incredibly complicated and cosmic feeling they are conjuring. I find myself grabbing onto my shoulders, my hips, my clavicle a lot more often these days and just saying: would you look at that. 

The other surprise was truly how disgusting the treatment of the poor was.  (I am writing this while hundreds of people without homes are freezing to death in Texas right now.) There were proposals to build gas chambers for the poor, and the workhouses were worse than I imagined. This comes up in the play. You watch a character sit with the idea of going to a workhouse—and resisting it: we are not that, we are not those people, this is the age of reason. And yet, somehow we are those people. We still are.

Sally McSweeney, the adventurous, pants-wearing foil for Gray and Carter, keeps things lively with her snappy repartee. Was she based on any real person in their lives?

Sally! So, (spoiler, omg) when Henry Gray dies, all the records say is that a nurse and his fiancée named Sally were in the room. That’s it. I screamed. His fiancée?!  He’s always referred to as never having time to date, so this was such a surprise, and wild to me that she only gave her first name, and is never heard from again. In the play, the idea for the book is actually her idea. She loves dressing like a man even though it’s still illegal, because the colonial idea of “woman” isn’t something she’s inspired by. And she wants to hold a knife like Henry does. I just love her. She’s teaching me so much.

Proofs of the title page for the 1858 edition showing Gray’s changes to Carter’s credit line

What’s next for AJ Clauss?

I’m currently staring at a wall of post-it notes that are the anatomy of this play and I’m just really grateful this is happening. I love this story. I’ll be sad when the wall comes down.

And I’m absolutely gobsmacked to say that next month I’ll be moving to the West Village thanks to the Still Standing artist residency. It’s a free apartment for a year as a chance to focus on writing. So the next twelve months I hope to be on a spiritual high with my ancestors and the universe, and sharing this love with our community.

The more you give away the more it comes back.

The 2021  EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.

Amanda Quaid on Eunice Foote, Families, Climate Science, and CIRCUMSTANCES AFFECTING THE HEAT OF THE SUN'S RAYS

Amanda Quaid

Kicking off the 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival on Thursday, February 25 will be the first public reading (free on Zoom) of CIRCUMSTANCES AFFECTING THE HEAT OF THE SUN'S RAYS, a new play by Amanda Quaid. The play takes its title from the path-breaking 1856 paper by amateur scientist, inventor, and women’s rights activist Eunice Newton Foote. In a two-page report on her innovative experiments, Foote became the first to identify carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and as the principal cause of global warming.  A pioneer of climate science, she remains largely unknown . . . until this play. Let’s have the playwright tell us more.

 (Interview by Rich Kelley)

Tell us how you came to write this play. When and how did you first hear about Eunice Foote?

I wanted to apply for a Sloan commission, but I didn’t have a topic. I think I actually googled “undiscovered women in science” or something like that. Climate science is a big interest for me, so when I chanced upon an article about Eunice Foote, I knew that was the story I wanted to tell.

What kind of research did you do? Did you use a consultant?

Samuel McKenzie

In my early research, I reached out to the Brookside Museum in Saratoga Springs, where Eunice had lived. They put me in touch with a researcher named Samuel McKenzie, who specializes in Eunice’s life and work. He generously shared many resources with me—a biographical report he wrote for the museum, photographs, letters, maps, and an analysis of the experiments. In addition to being a great researcher, he had a keen sense of story and an intuition about the kind of material that might be relevant to a playwright. I’m beyond grateful to Sam, and when he finally read the play and liked it (with notes, of course), I breathed a sigh of relief.

Why this play? Why now?

It’s interesting. She’s having something of a cultural renaissance. I just read a wonderful new book about women in the climate movement called All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, and it starts with Eunice’s story, portraying her as a kind of founding mother of climate science. From the beginning, women have been pioneers in this movement, and they’re stepping into leadership roles today at an unprecedented rate. This play is a kind of origin story. But hopefully, it’s more than a history lesson. At its heart, it’s about a family’s ambition—hers, her husband’s, her daughters’—and how that pans out for all of them in unexpected ways. I think most people can relate to that on some level.

There are many ways to write a play about a scientist. You chose to tell it very much through her dynamics with her family. Was that your original concept or one that evolved?

It took a lot of different incarnations, and I struggled at first to find the story. Since I was writing most of this during the first COVID lockdown, and I have a toddler, it was a feat just to get an hour of writing behind a closed door. So I started with a scene about Eunice not being able to get the privacy she needed, and it unfolded from there. I’m fascinated by her marriage because her husband was a feminist and her greatest supporter. Their bond was unusual and complex, and it completely upended expectations I had about marriage in the 1800s. I wanted to make it central to the play.

Researchers contend this may be the only known photograph of Eunice Newton Foote

In her book, Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British women in science, 1800–1900, Mary Creese notes that just sixteen papers in physics were published by American women in the 19th century; only two were published before 1889 and both were written by Eunice Foote.  So how is it possible that her remarkable contribution to climate science could lay unappreciated for more than a hundred years until a petroleum geologist rediscovered it in 2011?

It's a great mystery. And it does certainly make you wonder how many other Eunice Footes are out there.

Eunice was not only a trailblazing woman scientist but also an early woman’s rights activist who signed the Seneca Falls Declaration of Settlements (along with her husband) in 1848. How did knowing that affect your characterization of Eunice?

I think it helps her push herself to publish at a time when women didn’t. It gives her confidence and a sense of herself as a role model. But I treaded lightly with this theme. It’s tempting to read her story—the difficulty she had getting recognized, how her work was overshadowed by a male British scientist—as all about gender injustice—and in a sense, to dismiss it on that account as well, just because we’ve seen that story so many times. I felt strongly that the play have a wider scope. She’s not an activist who happens to be a scientist. She’s a scientist first whose understanding of the state of women’s rights colors the way she maneuvers in her field.

Because Eunice Foote was the first scientist to discover the impact increased levels of carbon dioxide could have on the atmosphere, your play includes ways to call attention to the difference in CO2 levels in 1856 and today. What do you want the audience to take away from CIRCUMSTANCES AFFECTING THE HEAT OF THE SUN'S RAYS?

The CO₂ levels interest me because people think of the rise of CO₂ as such a modern phenomenon. To learn that the level was also creeping up back then and that she was unaware of that, even as she made this crucial discovery—adds a layer of irony to the story. But there’s not one specific thing I hope people will take away. I just hope they’re entertained and leave with something that has meaning for them—whether that’s a story about parents and children, ambition, women’s history, science, or something else entirely.

Chart courtesy of www.sealevel.info https://www.sealevel.info/co2_and_ch4.html

In CIRCUMSTANCES, the character of the glazier introduces the idea that trees are sentient, the theme of one of my favorite books, The Overstory by Richard Powers. You have also written a wonderful online guide to the Great Trees of Central Park. Might we be seeing a play from you about trees at some point?

How funny you should ask! That’s all I can say at the moment. But there’s a great quote by the poet Robinson Jeffers in his poem “Carmel Point:”

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

I’m trying to do a little bit of that. The Overstory is one of my favorite novels, too.

You are also a “not only” in being both an actor and a playwright. How does your experience as an actor influence your playwriting? And does it also work the other way: does your playwriting inform your acting?

Being an actor probably helps with writing dialogue. I can tell if a scene is working by reading it out loud—though I’m sure other playwrights who aren’t actors also do that. As for playwriting informing acting, it’s always humbling to be in another seat in the room—you see the process from an entirely different angle. It makes me a more informed colleague.

Poster for the Heartbeat Opera workshop production of The Extinctionist

What’s next for Amanda Quaid?

An opera libretto I wrote called The Extinctionist, based on a short play I had in the EST Marathon, is having a public workshop at Heartbeat Opera this May.

The 2021  EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.