Biochemist Mandë Holford, Neuroscientist Daniela Schiller join Playwrights Nelson Diaz-Marcano, Anna Ziegler and Playwright-Actor Naomi Lorrain for the 2023 EST/Sloan Artist Cultivation Event on Zoom

From left, Mandë Holford, Daniela Schiller, Nelson Diaz-Marcano, Anna Ziegler, Naomi Lorrain

Where do ideas for plays come from? How do you develop a play? How is an EST/Sloan play different?

Playwrights! Join us on Monday, November 20, 2023, at 7:30 PM for the 2023 EST/Sloan Artist Cultivation Virtual Event, the annual far-ranging and free-wheeling discussion among scientists and playwrights about science, storytelling, and what makes plays work. This year’s event will be online and is free for any playwright interested in developing a play about science or technology. Registration is required. Once registered, you will receive the event access link in your confirmation email. You can register here.

WHAT MAKES A PLAY ABOUT SCIENCE GREAT?

“To stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.”—this has been the mission of The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project (EST/Sloan Project, for short) for the past 24 years. Over that time the EST/Sloan Project has awarded more than $3 million in grants to some 300 playwrights and theater companies. More than 150 productions of EST/Sloan-developed plays have been mounted nationwide. Commissions range from $5,000 to $10,000.

Applications for this year’s EST/Sloan commissions are currently open and will be accepted through December 15, 2023. You can view previous commission recipients on the EST/Sloan webpage.

Two related events culminate each EST/Sloan season:

1) The First Light Festival is a month-long series of readings and workshops that showcase plays in development, and

2) A full mainstage production of at least one work. Recent mainstage productions have included Smart (2023) by Mary Elizabeth Hamilton about AI technology and trust, what you are now (2022) by Sam Chanse about memory and trauma, Behind the Sheet (2019) by Charly Evon Simpson about how American gynecology began with experiments on slaves (a NY Times Critic’s Pick), BUMP by Chiara Atik (2018) on pregnancy and childbirth, SPILL (2017) by Leigh Fondakowski on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Boy (2016) by Anna Ziegler on sexual identity, Please Continue (2016) by Frank Basloe on Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments, Informed Consent (2015) by Deborah Zoe Laufer on scientific research and Alzheimer’s, Fast Company (2014) by Carla Ching on game theory and confidence games, Isaac’s Eye (2013) by Lucas Hnath on scientific method and rivalry, Headstrong (2012) by Patrick Link on sports and concussions, and Photograph 51 (2010) by Anna Ziegler about Rosalind Franklin’s role in the discovery of DNA.

This year's Artist Cultivation Event panelists include:

Dr. Mandë Holford

Dr. Mandë Holford is a Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at The American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine. Her joint appointments reflect her interdisciplinary research, which goes from mollusks to medicine, combining chemistry and biology to discover, characterize, and deliver novel peptides from venomous marine snails for manipulating cellular physiology in pain and cancer. Her laboratory investigates the power of venom to transform organisms and to transform lives when it is adapted to create novel therapeutics for treating human diseases and disorders. She is active in science education, advancing the public understanding of science, and science diplomacy. She co-founded Killer Snails, LLC, an award-winning EdTech learning games company. Her honors include being named: a 2023 NIH Pioneer Awardee, a 2020 Sustainability Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Breakthrough Women in Science by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NPR’s Science Friday, a Wings Women of Discovery fellow, an NSF CAREER awardee, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars, and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. Her Ph.D. is from The Rockefeller University, USA.

Dr. Daniela Schiller

Dr. Daniela Schiller is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, and the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research is focused on how the brain represents and modifies emotional memories. Schiller got her PhD in Tel Aviv University where she developed a laboratory model for negative symptoms of schizophrenia. She then continued to do a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University where she examined methods for emotional memory modification in the human brain. Schiller joined Mount Sinai in 2010 and has been directing the affective neuroscience laboratory since. Her lab has delineated the neural computations of threat learning, how the brain modifies emotional memories using imagination, and the dynamic tracking of affective states and social relationships. Schiller’s work has been published in numerous scholarly journals, including Nature, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She is a Fulbright Fellow and a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, and has been the recipient of many awards, including the New York Academy of Sciences’ Blavatnik Award, and the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences. 

Nelson Diaz-Marcano

Nelson Diaz-Marcano is a Puerto Rican NYC-based theater maker, advocate, and community leader whose mission is to create work that challenges and builds community. His play, LAS BORINQUEÑAS, will be the 2024 EST/Sloan Mainstage Production in April 2024. He currently serves as the Literary Director for the Latinx Playwright Circle where he has helped develop over a 100 plays in the past three years. His plays have been developed by the Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Pipeline Theatre Company, Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, Vision Latino Theater Company, The Orchard Project, The William Inge Theatre Festival, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and The Parsnip Ship, among others. Recent credits include: World Classic (Bishop Theatre Arts Center), Y Tu Abuela, Where is She? Part 1 (CLATA), When the Earth Moves, We Dance (Clubbed Thumb, Teatro Vivo), The Diplomats (Random Acts Chicago), Paper Towels (INTAR), Misfit, America (Hunter Theatre Company), I Saw Jesus in Toa Baja (Conch Shell Productions), and Revolt! (Vision Latino Theatre Company).

Anna Ziegler

Anna Ziegler’s plays include the widely produced Photograph 51 (West End, directed by Michael Grandage and starring Nicole Kidman; named the number one play of 2019 by the Chicago Tribune; winner of London’s WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play; available on Audible and in Methuen Drama’s Modern Classics series), The Last Match (Roundabout; Old Globe; Writers Theatre), The Wanderers (Old Globe; Roundabout; City Theatre; Gesher Theater (Israel); Ernst Deutsch Theater (Germany); Craig Noel Award for Outstanding New Play), A Delicate Ship (NY Times Critic’s Pick), Actually (Geffen Playhouse; Williamstown; Manhattan Theatre Club; Trafalgar Studios in London and many more; L.A. Ovation Award winner for Playwriting for an Original Play). Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama has published two collections of her work entitled Anna Ziegler: Plays One and Anna Ziegler: Plays Two. She is developing television and movie projects with Paramount, Defiant by Nature and Leviathan Productions.

Moderator

Naomi Lorrain

Naomi Lorrain is a Harlem-based playwright/actor. She is a 2022-2023 member of the Page 73 writers group, Interstate 73. She was a writer for the 2022 Disney Television Discovers: Talent Showcase. She is an AUDELCO Awards nominee and a NY Innovative Theatre Awards nominee for Best Lead Actress for Behind the Sheet and Entangled, respectively. Theater: Daphne (LCT3), La Race (Page 73/WP), Mark it Down, Song for a Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Behind the Sheet (Ensemble Studio Theatre), What To Send Up When It Goes Down (The Movement Theatre Company). TV: "Orange is the New Black" (Netflix), "Elementary" (CBS), "The Good Fight" (CBS All Access), "Madam Secretary'' (CBS).

AI & Generative Media Expert Claire Leibowicz, AI Ethics Leader Bhuva Shakti, and Google Engineer Lucy Vasserman join Playwright Naomi Lorrain to Discuss AI in the Home, Privacy, Ethics, and SMART

From left, Claire Leibowicz, Bhuva Shakti, Lucy Vasserman, Naomi Lorrain

This Saturday, April 29, following the 2:00 PM matinee performance of SMART, the brilliant new family drama by Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, everyone is encouraged to stay for a talkback discussion about the issues the play addresses. SMART dramatizes questions about how and why we let technology into our homes, and the unexpected changes tech can bring. The talkback will explore the risks and rewards of using smart devices in the home, the privacy issues we should be concerned about, how AI is changing how we live, the gap between how we think technology works and how it actually works, and the future of voice-activated AI. The audience will  have the opportunity to ask questions and join the discussion.

Playwright/actor Naomi Lorrain will moderate the discussion with the Head of AI and Media Integrity at the Partnership on AI Claire Leibowicz, Chief Ethics & Culture Officer at Women in AI Bhuva Shakti, and Google/Jigsaw Engineering and Product Manager Lucy Vasserman.

SMART is the 2023 mainstage production of the EST/Sloan Project, EST’s partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop new plays “exploring the world of science and technology.”

About the Panelists

Claire Leibowicz

Claire Leibowicz is the Head of the AI and Media Integrity Program at the Partnership on AI, where she has worked since the organization’s inception. Under Claire’s leadership, the AI and Media Integrity team creates best practices for the development and deployment of AI technologies that impact digital media and online information, in collaboration with over 100 partners from across civil society, academia, industry, and media. Aside from generative AI, the program focuses on responsible recommender systems, misinformation interventions, and the sustainability of local news. Claire's insights have appeared in publications such as Axios, the Associated Press, MIT Tech Review, WIRED, and The Hill, and she has advised companies, governments, and nonprofit organizations on AI governance, generative AI, and digital media

Bhuva Shakti

Bhuva Shakti (She/Her) is the Chief Ethics & Culture Officer and global management board member at Women in AI, a non-profit community of leaders in artificial intelligence and data science. With an MBA from Columbia University in New York and as a Senior Director at Capgemini, she has managed diverse multinational teams and launched several technology products in the investment banking, capital markets risk and regulatory compliance industry. As the financial inclusion advisor at Wallet Max, Bhuva is committed to positive planet impact, sustainable business transformation and green revenue strategies. Bhuva is an early-stage investor in social innovation startups with a vision to accelerate economic freedom and reduce inequalities.

Lucy Vasserman

Lucy Vasserman leads Engineering and Product at Jigsaw, a unit within Google focused on technology to make people safer. Jigsaw's focus areas include misinformation & hate, violent extremism, and censorship & cybersecurity. In these areas, Jigsaw’s technology offerings include Perspective API, machine learning to recognize toxicity in online comments, Outline, VPN technology to enable anyone to access the free and open internet, and a range of experimental tools and research. Prior to joining Jigsaw, Lucy worked on machine learning research and engineering for other Google products including Speech Recognition and Google Shopping.

About the Moderator

Naomi Lorrain (Photo: Stan Demidoff)

Naomi Lorrain is a Harlem-based playwright/actor. She is a 2022-2023 member of the Page 73 writers group, Interstate 73. She was a writer for the 2022 Disney Television Discovers: Talent Showcase. Her one-act comedy, THERESA, was selected for the 2022 Black Motherhood & Parenting Festival. She is an AUDELCO Awards nominee and a NY Innovative Theatre Awards nominee for Best Lead Actress for Behind the Sheet and Entangled, respectively. Theater: La Race (Page 73/WP), Mark it Down, Song for a Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Behind the Sheet (Ensemble Studio Theatre), What To Send Up When It Goes Down (The Movement Theatre Company). TV: "Orange is the New Black" (Netflix), "Elementary" (CBS), "The Good Fight" (CBS All Access), "Madam Secretary'' (CBS).

SMART began previews on March 30 and runs through April 30 at EST. You can purchase tickets here.

Data Journalist Meredith Broussard, Tech Editor Sophie Bushwick, and Technologist Ben Moskowitz join Playwrights Mary Elizabeth Hamilton and Naomi Lorrain to Discuss AI Devices, Privacy, and SMART

From left: Meredith Broussard, Sophie Bushwick, Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, Ben Moskowitz, and Naomi Lorrain.

On Saturday, April 22, following the 2:00 PM matinee performance of SMART, the moving new family drama by Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, everyone is encouraged to stay for a talkback discussion about the issues the play addresses. SMART dramatizes questions about how and why we let technology into our homes, and the unexpected changes tech can bring. The talkback will explore the risks and rewards of using smart devices in the home, the privacy issues we should be concerned about, how AI is changing how we live, the gap between how we think technology works and how it actually works, and the future of voice-activated AI. The audience will  have the opportunity to ask questions and join the discussion.

Playwright/actor Naomi Lorrain will moderate the discussion with professor of data journalism Meredith Broussard, tech editor Sophie Bushwick, pubic interest technologist Ben Moskowitz, and playwright Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, author of SMART.

SMART is the 2023 mainstage production of the EST/Sloan Project, EST’s partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop new plays “exploring the world of science and technology.”

About the Panelists

Meredith Broussard (Photo: Matthias Lundblad)

Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2023), as well as the award-winning 2018 book Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interests in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good. She appears in the Emmy-nominated documentary “Coded Bias,” now streaming on Netflix. A former features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has also worked as a software developer at AT&T Bell Labs and the MIT Media Lab. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Vox, and other outlets.

Sophie Bushwick

Sophie Bushwick is the technology editor at Scientific American, where she runs daily tech news coverage on topics from generative AI to jumping robots. She has more than a decade of experience as a science journalist and editor based in New York City, where she works online and in print, produces podcasts and videos, and makes radio and TV appearances on shows such as Science Friday. Previously, she was a senior editor at Popular Science, and her freelance work has also appeared in other outlets including Discover Magazine and Gizmodo.  

Mary Elizabeth Hamilton (Photo: JMA Photography)

Mary Elizabeth Hamilton is a Brooklyn-based playwright, TV writer and mom. She holds her MFA from The University of Iowa and an Artistic Diploma from Juilliard. Mary was a Jerome Fellow at The Lark and has participated in Youngblood, The O’Neill, Ars Nova, I-73, New Georges' Jam, and Play Penn. Her play 16 Winters won ASC's New Contemporaries Award. She is developing her play SMART with EST, and writing a pilot based on this play for AMC. She was a Story Editor on “Why Women Kill”, wrote the podcast "Power Trip" starring Tatiana Maslany, and is a resident playwright with New Dramatists.

Ben Moskowitz

Ben Moskowitz is a public interest technologist focused on strengthening user agency, privacy, and security. He leads R&D at Consumer Reports, helping consumers better navigate the digital marketplace. CR’s Innovation Lab collaborates with hackers, builders and entrepreneurs on disruptive technologies that advance the public interest. Consumer Reports has developed a number of free products to help consumers improve their privacy and security, including Security Planner and Permission Slip. Ben previously served in senior roles at the International Rescue Committee and the Mozilla Foundation, and is an adjunct professor at the New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

About the Moderator

Naomi Lorrain (Photo: Stan Demidoff)

Naomi Lorrain is a Harlem-based playwright/actor. She is a 2022-2023 member of the Page 73 writers group, Interstate 73. She was a writer for the 2022 Disney Television Discovers: Talent Showcase. Her one-act comedy, THERESA, was selected for the 2022 Black Motherhood & Parenting Festival. She is an AUDELCO Awards nominee and a NY Innovative Theatre Awards nominee for Best Lead Actress for Behind the Sheet and Entangled, respectively. Theater: La Race (Page 73/WP), Mark it Down, Song for a Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Behind the Sheet (Ensemble Studio Theatre), What To Send Up When It Goes Down (The Movement Theatre Company). TV: "Orange is the New Black" (Netflix), "Elementary" (CBS), "The Good Fight" (CBS All Access), "Madam Secretary'' (CBS).

SMART began previews on March 30 and runs through April 30 at EST. You can purchase tickets here.

Radiolab Host Jad Abumrad, Biologist Danielle Lee, Astrophysicist Brian Nord join Playwrights Carla Ching, Charly Evon Simpson, Actor/Playwright Naomi Lorrain at EST/Sloan Artist Cultivation Event

From left: Jad Abumrad, Danielle N. Lee, Brian Nord, Carla Ching, Charly Evon Simpson, Naomi Lorrain

WHAT MAKES A GREAT PLAY ABOUT SCIENCE?

“To stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.”—this has been the mission of The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project (EST/Sloan Project, for short) for the past 22 years. Over that time the EST/Sloan Project has awarded more than $3 million in grants to some 300 playwrights and theatre companies. More than 150 productions of EST/Sloan-developed plays have been mounted nationwide.

Every year the highlight of the EST/Sloan Project submission season is the Fall Artist Cultivation Event. At this eagerly anticipated event, a panel of scientists, science writers and playwrights engages in a far-ranging and free-wheeling discussion with an audience of prospective playwrights about “What Makes a Great Play about Science?” The 2020 Fall Artist Cultivation Event will be virtual this year and take place on Monday, November 30 at 7 PM. 

This virtual event will be held on the Zoom platform and is free to attend for any playwright interested in developing a play about science or technology. Registration is required. Once registered, you will receive the event access link in your confirmation email. You can register here.

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

Two related events culminate each EST/Sloan season: 1) The First Light Festival is a month-long series of readings and workshops that showcase plays in development, and 2) a full mainstage production of at least one work. Recent mainstage productions have included Behind the Sheet (2019) by Charly Evon Simpson on the enslaved women who as experimental victims launched the science of gynecology (a NY Times Critic’s Pick), BUMP by Chiara Atik (2018) on pregnancy and childbirth, SPILL (2017) by Leigh Fondakowski on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Boy (2016) by Anna Ziegler on sexual identity, Please Continue (2016) by Frank Basloe on Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments, Informed Consent (2015) by Deborah Zoe Laufer on scientific research and Alzheimer’s, Fast Company (2014) by Carla Ching on game theory and confidence games, Isaac’s Eye (2013) by Lucas Hnath on scientific method and rivalry, and Headstrong (2012) by Patrick Link on sports and concussions.

 This year's Artist Cultivation Event panelists include:

Jad Abumrad (Photo: Lizzie Johnston)

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

Carla Ching (Photo: Elisabeth Caren)

Carla Ching wrote Fast Company as an EST/Sloan commission which got produced in 2014 at EST as well as at South Coast Rep, and in Seattle and Minneapolis. Her other plays include Nomad Motel, The Two Kids That Blow Shit Up, The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness, TBA, Dirty and Big Blind/Little Blind.  Her full-length plays have been produced or workshopped by The O’Neill Playwrights Conference, The Atlantic Theatre Company, South Coast Rep, Center Theater Group, Huntington Theatre Company, the National New Play Network Showcase of New Plays, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Lark Play Development Center, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, Unicorn Theatre Company, The Women’s Project, Partial Comfort, 2g, The Hegira, Ferocious Lotus, Porkfilled Productions and Artists at Play, among others. She’s also written for television on Fear the Walking Dead, I Love Dick, The First, Preacher, and Home Before Dark.

Danielle N. Lee (Photo: Alecia Hoyt Photography)

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

Brian Nord (Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

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

Charly Evon Simpson (Photo: JMA Photography)

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

This Year’s Moderator

Naomi Lorrain (Photo: Stan Demidoff)

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

Historian Marisa Fuentes, Urogynecologist Ambereen Sleemi, Public Health Specialist Erin Anastasi & Playwright Charly E. Simpson join Actor Naomi Lorrain to discuss the context of BEHIND THE SHEET

From left: Marisa Fuentes, Ambereen Sleemi, Erin Anastasi, Charly Evon Simpson, Naomi Lorrain

On February 2, following the 2:00 pm matinee performance of BEHIND THE SHEET, the powerful new drama by Charly Evon Simpson, everyone is encouraged to stay for the third and final talkback about the historical and scientific context of the play, as well as the many issues it addresses, especially the history of gynecological surgical techniques, the rights of enslaved women to be used for experiments, what urgent gynecological concerns exist today in the developing world, and much more. Joining Charly will be Marisa J. Fuentes, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and History at Rutgers University, Ambereen Sleemi, Executive Director and Surgical Director of International Medical Response, and Erin Anastasi, Coordinator of the Campaign to End Fistula at the United Nations Population Fund, for a conversation moderated by actor and research scholar Naomi Lorrain (Philomena in the play).

BEHIND THE SHEET confronts the history of a great medical breakthrough by telling the forgotten story of a community of enslaved black women who involuntarily enabled the discovery. In 1840s Alabama, Philomena assists a doctor—her owner—as he performs experimental surgeries on her fellow slave women, trying to find a treatment for the painful post-childbirth complications known as fistulas. Reframing the origin story of modern gynecology, the play dramatizes how these women supported each other, and questions who, and what, history remembers.

The World Premiere of BEHIND THE SHEET is this year’s mainstage production of the EST/Sloan Project, EST's partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop new plays "exploring the worlds of science and technology," an initiative now in its twentieth year.

About the Panelists

Professor Marisa J. Fuentes

Marisa J. Fuentes is the Presidential Term Chair in African American History and Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and History at Rutgers University—New Brunswick. Her scholarship brings together cultural studies, critical historiography, and black feminist theory to examine gender, sexuality, and slavery in the early modern Atlantic World. Professor Fuentes is the author of Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) which won the Barbara T. Christian Best Humanities Book Prize, the Berkshires Conference of Women’s Historians First Book Prize, and the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians. She is also the co-editor of Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, Volume I (Rutgers University Press, 2016), and the “Slavery and the Archive” special issue in History of the Present (November 2016).  

Dr. Ambereen Sleemi

Ambereen Sleemi is a female pelvic medicine reconstructive surgeon (urogynecologist) and trained obstetric fistula surgeon. She is Co-founder, Executive Director and Surgical Director of International Medical Response and leads a medical relief project in Puerto Rico, and fistula training programs in Malawi, Liberia and Haiti. Dr. Sleemi serves as an obstetric fistula surgeon for the Eritrean Women’s Project in Mendefera, Eritrea since 2007, and as a surgical team co-leader for Medicine in Action’s spring trip to Kingston, Jamaica as well as on the medical board. She spent six years on the executive committee of the International Society for Obstetric Fistula Surgeons (ISOFS) and is still an active member. In January, 2013, she developed the Haitian Women’s Heath Collaborative in partnership with the Department of Ob/Gyn at the National Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Erin Anastasi with children in northern Uganda (Gulu district) where she worked on a project with MSF/Doctors Without Borders.

Erin Anastasi is Coordinator of the Campaign to End Fistula and Technical Specialist for Sexual & Reproductive Health (SRH)/Obstetric Fistula in the Technical Division at the United Nations Population Fund. In 2017, the United Nations Federal Credit Union Foundation awarded Erin its Women’s Empowerment Award for her leadership of the Campaign.  She received her doctorate in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the University of London and her Master of Health Sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Launched in 2003, the Campaign to End Fistula now consists of over 100 global partners working in more than 55 countries across Africa, Asia and the Arab region. In each country it focuses on prevention by increasing access to quality maternal health care services; treatment, from training doctors in fistula surgery to equipping and upgrading fistula centers; and rehabilitation/reintegration, including emotional, economic, and social support.   

Charly Evon Simpson

Charly Evon Simpson is the author of BEHIND THE SHEET, this year’s EST/Sloan mainstage production. Her other plays include Jump, Scratching the Surface, form of a girl unknown, it’s not a trip it’s a journey, Stained, Hottentotted, Trick of the Light, While We Wait, who we let in, or what she will, and more. Her work has been seen and/or developed with Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ars Nova, Chautauqua Theater Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, The Flea, P73’s Summer Residency, National New Play Network through its NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop and National Showcase of New Plays, and others. Jump will receive an NNPN Rolling World Premiere, with productions at Playmaker’s Rep (Chapel Hill, NC), Actor’s Express (Atlanta, GA), Milagro Theatre (Portland, OR), and Shrewd Productions (Austin, TX) in 2019-20.  She’s currently a member of WP Theater’s 2018-2020 Lab, The New Georges Jam, The Amoralists 18/19 ‘Wright Club and she’s The Pack’s current playwright-in-residence. Charly is a former member of SPACE on Ryder Farm’s The Working Farm, Clubbed Thumb’s 17/18 Early Career Writers’ Group, Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood, and Pipeline Theatre Company’s PlayLab. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at SUNY Purchase and an engager at The Engaging Educator. 

About the Moderator

Naomi Lorrain (Photo: Stan Demidoff).

Naomi Lorrain plays Philomena in the world premiere production of BEHIND THE SHEET by Charly Evon Simpson at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Naomi is a New York City-based actor, playwright and scholar. She received her B.A. in the History of Science, History of Medicine and African American Studies from Yale University and her M.F.A. in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She works part-time as a Scholars-in-Residence Research Assistant at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Her plays include A Trojan Woman’s Tale (Villa La Pietra), The Queen of Macon County (The National Black Theatre), Shelfies (The 52nd Street Project), The Big O (Villa La Pietra), and Rigor Mortis (NYU Tisch). Recent theater credits include What to Send Up When It Goes Down (Movement Theatre Company), Stained (The Amoralist), Song for a Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Restoration Comedy (The Flea), and Daughter of Lot (Edinburgh Fringe Festival). TV: “Orange Is the New Black” (Netflix), “Elementary” (CBS), “The Good Fight” (CBS), “Madam Secretary” (CBS). As a Scholars-in-Residence Research Assistant, she has worked on several books, including Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive by Marisa J. Fuentes. At Yale, her senior essay “Plan B: The Collision of the Birth Control Movement and the Uplift Movement Viewed Through Works of Angelina Weld Grimké” received both the Lily Rosen Prize in Women's Health for best essay that contributes to knowledge about women’s health and the William Pickens Prize for outstanding senior essay in the field of African and African American Studies.

BEHIND THE SHEET began previews on January 9 and runs through February 10 at EST. You can purchase tickets here.

Historian Deirdre Cooper Owens, Gynecologist Nerys Benfield and Director Colette Robert join Actor/Scholar Naomi Lorrain to discuss slavery, the birth of gynecology in America, and BEHIND THE SHEET

From left: Professor Deirdre Cooper Owens, Dr. Nerys Benfield, Colette Robert, Naomi Lorrain

On January 26, following the 2:00 pm matinee performance of BEHIND THE SHEET, the powerful new drama by Charly Evon Simpson, everyone is encouraged to stay for what promises to be a provocative discussion of the many issues the play addresses, especially the history of gynecological surgical techniques, the rights of enslaved women to be used for experiments, race and gender relations in nineteenth-century America, and much more. Joining the play’s director Colette Robert will be Deirdre Cooper Owens, Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY, and author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, and Nerys Benfield, Associate Professor and the Director of Family Planning in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women’s Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine for a conversation moderated by actor and research scholar Naomi Lorrain (Philomena in the play).

BEHIND THE SHEET confronts the history of a great medical breakthrough by telling the forgotten story of a community of enslaved black women who involuntarily enabled the discovery. In 1840s Alabama, Philomena assists a doctor—her owner—as he performs experimental surgeries on her fellow slave women, trying to find a treatment for the painful post-childbirth complications known as fistulas. Reframing the origin story of modern gynecology, the play dramatizes how these women supported each other, and questions who, and what, history remembers.

The World Premiere of BEHIND THE SHEET is this year’s mainstage production of the EST/Sloan Project, EST's partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop new plays "exploring the worlds of science and technology," an initiative now in its twentieth year.

About the Panelists

Professor Deirdre Cooper Owens

Professor Deirdre Cooper Owens is Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY in Queens, New York and an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer.  She has served as an American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology Fellow in Washington, D.C. and is a board member for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology (UGA Press, 2017) won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the OAH as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history. Professor Cooper Owens is also the Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the country’s oldest cultural institution​. In the fall of 2019, she will join the University of Nebraska, Lincoln’s Department of History as the inaugural Linda & Charles Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and the Director of the Humanities in Medicine Program. Copies of Medical Bondage will be available for sale—and signing by the author—following the talkback.

Dr. Nerys Benfield

Dr. Nerys C. Benfield is an Associate Professor and the Director of Family Planning, the Fellowship in Family Planning, and the Global Women's Health Program at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. She is a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist in Bronx, New York and is affiliated with Montefiore Medical Center. Her research interests include the integration of contraceptive counseling, access, and distribution into medical care for high-risk women both domestically and internationally, uro-genital fistula, and clinical training and health technologies in low-resource settings. Dr. Benfield has worked in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since 2008 where she has developed an academic collaborative research and clinical training program with research interests that include the integration of contraceptive counseling, access, and distribution into medical care for high-risk women, uro-genital fistula, and methods to optimize evidence-based clinical training and the use of health technologies such as information and communication technologies (ICT) and ultrasound in low-resource settings.

Colette Robert

Colette Robert is the director of the world premiere production of BEHIND THE SHEET by Charly Evon Simpson (New York Times Critic’s Pick) at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Her recent directing credits include: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (NYU Grad Acting), Mary’s Wedding (Chester Theatre Company), Big Love (Sarah Lawrence College), How My Grandparents Fell in Love (EST, New York Times Critic's Pick), What Every Girl Should Know (NYU/Stella Adler Studio), Hottentotted (The Tank, Ars Nova/ANT Fest), The Mountaintop (Chester Theatre Company), Icons/Idols (The New Ohio/Ice Factory Festival), Flops, Failures, and Fiascos (The Civilians), and When Last We Flew (Diversionary Theatre and FringeNYC, GLAAD Media Award). As a playwright, her play The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents the 84th Annual Star-Burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel has been developed with Fuller Road Artist Residency, New Georges, Mabou Mines, and The Drama League. Colette is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, a co-facilitator of the New Georges Jam, and an adjunct lecturer in the Humanities department at Hunter College. 

About the Moderator

Naomi Lorrain (Photo: Stan Demidoff)

Naomi Lorrain plays Philomena in the world premiere production of BEHIND THE SHEET by Charly Evon Simpson at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Naomi is a New York City-based actor, playwright and scholar. She received her B.A. in the History of Science, History of Medicine and African American Studies from Yale University and her M.F.A. in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She works part-time as a Scholars-in-Residence Research Assistant at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Her plays include A Trojan Woman’s Tale (Villa La Pietra), The Queen of Macon County (The National Black Theatre), Shelfies (The 52nd Street Project), The Big O (Villa La Pietra), and Rigor Mortis (NYU Tisch). Recent theater credits include What to Send Up When It Goes Down (Movement Theatre Company), Stained (The Amoralist), Song for a Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Restoration Comedy (The Flea), and Daughter of Lot (Edinburgh Fringe Festival). TV: “Orange Is the New Black” (Netflix), “Elementary” (CBS), “The Good Fight” (CBS), “Madam Secretary” (CBS). As a Scholars-in-Residence Research Assistant, she has worked on several books, including Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive by Marisa J. Fuentes.

BEHIND THE SHEET began previews on January 9 and runs through February 10 at EST. You can purchase tickets here.