[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2740","attributes":{"alt":"From left: Heather Berlin, Maria Konnikova, Deb Laufer, Ivan Oransky","class":"media-image","height":"336","style":"line-height: 1.538em; width: 700px; height: 336px; margin: 5px;","title":"From left: Heather Berlin, Maria Konnikova, Deb Laufer, Ivan Oransky","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"700"}}]]
Over the past 16 years The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Project has awarded more than $1.5 million to some 250 playwrights and theatre companies. There have been more than 150 productions of EST/Sloan developed plays nationwide. You can view this year’s just-announced grants here.
The EST/Sloan Project mission: “to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.”
Every year EST/Sloan kicks off its new season with 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 could make a great play about science.” The 2014 Fall Artist Cultivation Event will take place at EST on Tuesday, October 14 at 7 PM. The event is free and any playwright interested in developing a play about science or technology is welcome to attend.
This year's panelists include:
- Neuroscientist Heather Berlin, currently an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a Visiting Scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Berlin is also a presenter on the international Discovery Channel Series "Superhuman Showdown, a frequent commentator on the History Channel, and has appeared on StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson. This summer Berlin collaborated with the rapper Baba Brinkman at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in a show about the neuroscience of improvisation.
- Maria Konnikova, a contributing writer for The New Yorker online, where she writes a weekly column with a focus on psychology and science. Her first book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking/Penguin, 2013), was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into seventeen languages. The Confidence Game, her new book on the psychology of the con, is scheduled for publication by Viking/Penguin in 2015.
- Playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer, author of End Days (EST/Sloan 2009 Mainstage Production and awarded The ATCA Steinberg citation), Sirens, Leveling Up, Out of Sterno, and many other plays. Laufer is also the recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and the Lilly Award.
This year’s moderator will be Ivan Oransky, M.D., vice president and global editorial director of MedPageToday, co-founder of Retraction Watch, and founder of Embargo Watch. He teaches medical journalism at New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program and is vice president of the Association of Health Care Journalists. He has also kindly served as moderator for talkbacks for the EST/Sloan productions of Headstrong and Fast Company.