1000th Moth Performance Plays 2012 World Science Festival Tonight, 5/31

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Pulitzer Prize-winning cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee headline the 1,000th performance by The Moth, the non-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling, as part of the 5th Annual World Science Festival.

Tonight, May 31st, comedian and New York Times bestselling author Andy Borowitz will host a slate of esteemed scientists, writers, and artists as they take the stage at Cooper Union's Great Hall to tell true stories about their personal relationship with science. Performers will include artist and writer Tricia Rose Burt; physicist and bestselling author Paul Davies; and historian and author Ted Widmer.

Founded in 1997, The Moth (www.themoth.org) will celebrate its fifteenth anniversary this year. Since the first Moth evening in founder George Dawes Green’s living room in New York City, The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, by people from all walks of life to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Moth shows are renowned for the great range of human experience they showcase. Since each story is true and every voice authentic, the shows dance between documentary and theater, creating a unique, intimate, and often enlightening experience for the audience.

The 2012 World Science Festival, taking place from May 30th to June 3rd in New York City, brings together many of the world’s leading scientific minds with renowned artists and influential thinkers to illuminate science in novel and exciting ways, breaking down barriers and connecting leading scientists to a broader public. Since its inception, the annual Festival has attracted more than 600,000 people to 200 programs in locations throughout New York City. It is the nation’s most anticipated science event and allows everyone – kids and adults, novice and enthusiast – to experience science in a unique and thrilling way.

"The Moth and The World Science Festival share a common goal: to inspire a sense of wonder about the world we live in, and the people we share it with," said Catherine Burns, The Moth's Artistic Director, "and we're thrilled to be celebrating our one-thousandth performance at the Festival."

The full lineup of storytellers includes:

Andy Borowitz (host) is a comedian and New York Times bestselling author whose work appears in The New Yorker and at his award-winning website, BorowitzReport.com, which has millions of readers around the world. He has had two bestsellers in the past year: The 50 Funniest American Writers and An Unexpected Twist, a memoir inspired by a story he told at the World Science Festival in 2009. He has been performing with the Moth since 1999.

Tricia Rose Burt grew up in the South, where she was strongly encouraged to pursue business, marry a Southerner, raise children, and live below the Mason Dixon line. Attempts to lead that life backfired. Thanks in large part to Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, she is now a writer, performer, and artist and lives in New England. She married a man from Ireland. They have a dog. Her story, How to Draw a Nekkid Man, appears on The Best of The Moth Radio Hour CD Vol. 19 and is taken from her one-woman show of the same name. Formerly known as I Will Be Good, the show was selected for the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) and further honored to appear in the FringeNYC Encore Series. In addition to her weekly blog at www.triciaroseburt.com, Tricia is currently working on a memoir and her next show, Be Fruitful and Multiply. A devoted member of The Moth, she encourages everyone to join.

Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author. He is a Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University, where he directs the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science—a cosmic think tank that tackles the big questions of existence, from the origin of the universe to the origin of life and the nature of time. Davies also directs a National Cancer Institute research program that studies cancer from a physics perspective. Among his research accomplishments, he has helped explain how black holes radiate energy, what caused the ripples in the cosmic afterglow of the big bang, and why life on Earth may have come from Mars. Davies has written about 30 books, most recently The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? His preoccupation with deep conceptual problems and his fearless championing of bold new ideas earned Davies the epithet of “The Disruptor” in a recent profile in Nature magazine. His many media projects include presenting two six-part series on The Big Questions for Australian television. He has received awards from The Royal Society and the UK Institute of Physics, and also received the 1995 Templeton Prize. In 2007 he was named a Member of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s birthday honors list.

Lisa P. Jackson is Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She is the first African-American to serve the post. Originally from New Orleans, Jackson graduated summa cum laude from Tulane University, and earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University. In 1987, she joined the EPA as a staff-level scientist; in 2002, Jackson accepted a position with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where she was appointed commissioner of the agency four years later. By 2008, Jackson had been called to the cabinet of President Barack Obama. In her current role as EPA Administrator, Jackson has focused on improving air and water quality, especially in underserved communities.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff physician at Columbia University Medical Center. A former Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, one of the New York Times “Ten Best Books of 2010”, and he has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Republic.

Ted Widmer is a historian who has starred in a rock and roll band, written speeches for an American president, enjoyed a lifelong love affair with cartoons and now leads one of the most cherished libraries in the land. Currently the director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Ted was plucked from his junior teaching position at Harvard to be President Bill Clinton's speechwriter in 1997. Among his published books is Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City, the biography of Martin Van Buren and, most recently, an account of America's search for a place in the world, Ark of the Liberties. Widmer was also the founder and first director of the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College. Even the rock band for which he was a lead singer and guitarist, the Upper Crust, was historical in nature: a group of powdered-wig aristocrats crowing, "Let them eat rock!"

This month's milestone comes on the heels of The Moth's announcement earlier this year that it is the recipient of a $750,000 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, which will allow it to expand the Peabody Award-winning The Moth Radio Hour into a weekly series and preserve its vast video and audio archive of live storytelling events from the past 15 years.

About THE MOTH: The Moth is not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, by people from all walks of life to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. The Moth features simple, old-fashioned storytelling on thoroughly modern themes by wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors.

The Moth conducts six ongoing programs – The Moth Mainstage, which tours nationally; The Moth StorySLAM program, which conducts open-mic story competitions around the country; The MothSHOP Community Education Program, which brings storytelling workshops free of charge to underserved adults and high school students; The Moth Podcast, which is downloaded over a million times a month; The MothSHOP Corporate Program, which offers corporate storytelling solutions; and The Moth Radio Hour, which is, produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media and presented by PRX, The Public Radio Exchange. The Moth Radio Hour airs on 250 public radio stations across the country.

The Moth’s executive staff are: Joan D. Firestone, Executive Director; Catherine Burns, Artistic Director; Sarah Austin Jenness, Producing Director; and the pro-active Board of Directors is represented by Anne Maffei, Chair.

The World Science Festival is a production of the Science Festival Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in New York City. The Foundation's mission is to cultivate a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.

The World Science Festival was co-founded in 2008 by Brian Greene, Columbia University professor of physics and mathematics and bestselling author of The Elegant Universe and The Hidden Reality, and Tracy Day, Emmy Award-winning journalist and television producer.

“Too Close To The Sun: Stories of Flash Points" – The 1,000th show by The Moth, the acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the art and craft of storytelling, presented during the 2012 World Science Festival takes place tonight, Thursday, May 31, 2012, from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM at The Great Hall, Cooper Union, 30 Cooper Square, New York, NY.