Primate Field Researcher Kirsty Graham and Historian of Africa Jill Rosenthal join Radiolab co-host Robert Krulwich to discuss chimpanzees, chaperones, and HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL AND HER MOTHER?

From left, Kirsty Graham, Jill Rosenthal, Robert Krulwich

On Saturday, March 15, following the 2:00 PM matinee performance at the Ensemble Studio Theatre of HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL AND HER MOTHER?, the witty new comedy by Michael Walek, everyone is encouraged to stay for a lively discussion about the play with primate field researcher Kirsty Graham and historian of Africa Jill Rosenthal. Former co-host of Radiolab Robert Krulwich will moderate the discussion about the life and achievements of Jane Goodall, and the cultural, historical, political, and scientific background of the play.

When twenty-six-year-old Jane Goodall began her expedition to study chimpanzees in Tanganyika in 1960, the government insisted she must bring a chaperone. So, she brought her mother. In HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL AND HER MOTHER? playwright Michael Walek mines notes by both Jane and her mother to create a sparkling comedy about the process of scientific discovery: what Jane learned about the behavior of chimpanzees and how the duo ingeniously improvised life in the wild.

The audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and join the discussion.

HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL AND HER MOTHER?, written by Michael Walek and directed by Linsay Firman, is the Spring 2025 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,” an initiative now in its twenty-fifth year. 

About the Panelists

Dr. Kirsty Graham

Kirsty E. Graham is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College, particularly focused on the Animal Behavior & Conservation MA program. They are establishing a research group around understanding bodily communication in other species. From 2020-2024, they were a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, UK, working for Dr. Cat Hobaiter on an ERC funded project comparing gestural communication across bonobos, chimpanzees, humans, gorillas, and orangutans. Their research there has been published on the Wild Minds Lab. From 2017-2020, they were a Research Associate with Professor Katie Slocombe at the University of York, looking at the development of Joint Attention across humans, chimpanzees, and Sulawesi crested macaques. They examined whether other primate species are able to share attention about objects in the same way that humans can, or whether they have some of the skills that might be required for this ability.

Dr. Jill Rosenthal

Jill Rosenthal is an Assistant Professor of History at Hunter College. Her research examines the history of migration, identity, and international aid in the African Great Lakes region—with a specific focus on the legacy of colonial borders and illicit migration (often termed “refugee” flows). At Hunter College, Jill teaches courses on 19th and 20th century African history, refugees and the nation-state, and violence and healing. Her research and teaching both examine the diverse interconnections between global and local spaces, as well as the ongoing relevance of historical events and memories. Jill’s first book, From Migrants to Refugees: The Politics of Aid Along the Tanzania-Rwanda Border (2023), argues that transnational aid to Rwandan refugees unfolded as part of a global project of nation state formation and regulation--one which deeply affected local narratives of community and belonging. The book also explores the colonial legacies that continue to influence humanitarian aid projects.  From Migrants to Refugees utilizes over one hundred multi-sited interviews and archival research conducted in Geneva and throughout Tanzania.

About the Moderator

Robert Krulwich

Robert Krulwich is an American radio and television journalist who co-hosted the radio show Radiolab from mid-2004 until January 20, 2020 and has also served as a science correspondent for NPR. He has reported for ABC, CBS, and Pacifica, with assignment pieces for ABC's Nightline and World News Tonight, as well as PBS's Frontline, NOVA, and NOW with Bill Moyers. In his Frontline role, he has won an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award for his coverage of campaign finance in the 1992 U.S. Presidential campaign; a national Emmy Award for his investigation of privacy on the Internet, High Stakes in Cyberspace; and a George Polk Award for an hour on the savings and loan scandal. His ABC special on Barbie also won an Emmy. TV Guide has called him "the most inventive network reporter in television,” and New York Magazine wrote that he's "the man who simplifies without being simple." Since his retirement, Robert has been collaborating on a documentary about Oliver Sacks with Ric Burns and a project about photographer Anand Varma's cultivation of jellyfish.

HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL AND HER MOTHER? began previews on March 5 and runs through April 6. You can purchase tickets here.

Read more about HAVE YOU MET JANE GOODALL AND HER MOTHER?

Interview with playwright Michael Walek about the creation of the play

Anne Pusey’s program essay about Jane Goodall

“What Jane Goodall Has Taught Us about Chimpanzees”

Historian Evelynn Hammonds and Urogynecologist Lauri Romanzi join Playwright Charly Evon Simpson and Historian Jennifer L. Morgan to discuss medical experiments, lost voices, and BEHIND THE SHEET

From left: Professor Evelynn Hammonds, Dr. Lauri Romanzi, Charly Evon Simpson, Professor Jennifer L. Morgan

On January 19, following the 2:00 pm matinee performance of BEHIND THE SHEET, the powerful new drama by Charly Evon Simpson, audiences are encouraged to stay for what promises to be a lively discussion of many of the 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 playwright Charly Evon Simpson will be Evelynn Hammonds, Chair, the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, and urogynecologist and fistula surgeon Lauri Romanzi for a conversation moderated by Jennifer L. Morgan, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis & History at New York University.

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 Evelynn Hammonds

Professor Evelynn Hammonds is a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She is currently Chair of the Department of the History of Science and Director of the Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.  Prof. Hammonds was the first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University (2005-2008).  From 2008-2103 she served as Dean of Harvard College. Professor Hammonds’ areas of research include the histories of science, medicine and public health in the United States; race and gender in science studies; feminist theory and African American history. She is the author of Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, 2002), and, most recently, with Rebecca Herzig, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (MIT Press, 2008.) Professor Hammonds’ current work focuses on the intersection of scientific, medical and socio-political concepts of race in the United States.

Dr. Lauri Romanzi

Dr. Lauri Romanzi is an international fistula surgeon, urogynecologist and an advisor to the Office of Global Women’s Health of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her international work includes academic appointment through Yale University to Rwanda’s Human Resources for Health, as well as long-term relationships with Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and with Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Somaliland.  She has worked in West Africa onboard Mercy Ship, throughout sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as an academic collaborator to national and international healthcare organizations, and as technical consultant to the United Nations Population Fund for development of  “End Fistula” strategic plans for Nepal, Afghanistan and Eritrea.  Within the United States, she collaborates with global health organizations to advocate on Capitol Hill for effective fistula legislation. In addition to  academic publications, she has authored works to inform the public, including Plumbing and Renovations, The Good In Bed Guide to Pelvic Organ Prolapse, and the chapter “Sexual Violence: Genital Fistula and Conflict” for the book Operation Crisis: Surgical Care in the Developing World during Conflict and Disaster.

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

Professor Jennifer L. Morgan

Professor Jennifer L. Morgan is Professor of History in the department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University where she also serves as Chair.  She is the author of Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in the Making of New World Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and the co-editor of Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in America (University of Illinois Press, 2016).  Her research examines the intersections of gender and race in in the Black Atlantic world.  Her most recent journal articles include “Accounting for ‘The Most Excruciating Torment’: Trans-Atlantic Passages” in History of the Present and “Archives and Histories of Racial Capitalism” in Social Text.  In addition to her archival work as an historian, Professor Morgan has published a range of essays on race, gender, and the process of “doing history,” most notably “Experiencing Black Feminism” in Deborah Gray White’s edited volume Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower (2007). She is currently at work on a project that considers colonial numeracy, racism and the rise of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the seventeenth-century English Atlantic world tentatively entitled “Accounting for the Women in Slavery.”  Morgan teaches courses on the history of slavery, on race and reproduction, and on comparative feminist theory and praxis. 

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