STAGE Int'l Script Comp Names Craig Baxter's THE ALTRUISTS as 2010 Winner

The prestigious STAGE International Script Competition announces The Altruists, by British playwright Craig Baxter, as the 2010 winner of their 4th biennial award for best new play about science and technology. STAGE - Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration - will award Baxter a $10,000 cash prize and an opportunity to further develop his play. Along with Baxter's The Altruists, four other plays were chosen as finalists in the 2010 STAGE International Script Competition. These finalists include Gyroball, by Tim Bauer, Leg Man, by David Caudle, Instructions to Any Future Socialist Government Wishing to Abolish Christmas, by Michael Mackenzie, and The Other Place, by Sharr White.

The winner and finalists were chosen by a stellar panel of judges, all multiple award-winners in their own right. The panel of judges includes TOny, Olivier, and Obie Award-winning playwright John Guare, Nobel Laureate in chemistry Dr. Alan Heeger, Nobel Laureate in physics and KBE Sir Anthony Leggett, and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. The judging panel also includes Pulitzer Prize and Tony-Award winning playwright David Auburn who has recently directed Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance which is currently playing at the Berkshire Theatre Festival through September 4th. All of the highly-distinguished judges for STAGE have previously served on the Competition's panel.

In Craig Baxter's The Altruists, American eccentric George Price's scientific work parallels his personal quest for answers to fundamental questions: "How should we live - for ourselves, or for others?" and "What are the benefits and costs of our choices?" The Altruists, set in London in the "Swinging 60s," is based on a true story. The play takes us behind the scenes with George Price, Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, scientists whose fundamental work in evolutionary biology nearly fifty years ago resonates deeply with current investigations into fields ranging from social networking to cell behavior and beyond.

Baxter is a published and produced playwright whose plays have been performed in London and throughout the U.K., as well as in the U.S., Canada, Turkey and, in translation, in Berlin and Madrid. His plays have also been broadcast on the BBC World Service and BBC Radio. He has been both a scriptwriter and script consultant for BBC TV. Baxter, who lives in Cambridge, England and divides his professional time between playwriting and scientific publishing, holds a B.S. in zoology and an M.A. in playwriting.

Baxter's winning script was chosen from nearly 225 entrants hailing from fifteen countries. Each year, STAGE receives plays from all over the world, written by a wide range of authors including established and prominent playwrights and screenwriters, an unknown playwright living in a remote part of Nigeria, highly-regarded scientists, and even a Nobel Laureate.

In addition to announcing the 2010 winner, STAGE is happy to announce their 5th biennial International Script Competition. Submissions will be accepted from September 15 - December 1, 2011. For current guidelines and all details, please visit: www.stage.cnsi.ucsb.edu/competition/guidelines/guidelines.html.

STAGE began as a unique collaboration between the Professional Artists Lab (the Lab), a dynamic artistic laboratory, and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), an esteemed science institute, both housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara. STAGE grew out of efforts to catalyze the development of theatre that depicts the technological age in which we live and to foster new and imaginative voices and methods of storytelling, as well as to promote understanding of the sciences in the public arena. And while the Lab and CNSI are still at the helm, STAGE has, in a sense, developed its own identity as a result of enormous success and a subsequent expansion of activities.

The new STAGE Collaboratory, launched last year, is bringing together an international array of professional artists, scientists and engineers to create original multi-media theatre pieces in which science and technology play prominent roles in content and/or form.

Nancy Kawalek, founder/director of STAGE (and the Professional Artists Lab) is at the helm of the Collaboratory's first theatrical creation: The Brain Project, a multi-media theatre piece about the brain. Prominent psychologists, neuroscientists and engineers such as Drs. Michael Gazzaniga, Kenneth Kosik and Maurizio Seracini are participating in the novel creative process.

"We're deeply honored and proud that STAGE's efforts have garnered the support of such celebrated talents in the arts and sciences," said Kawalek. "The ultimate goal is to take chances with the work we're doing. Accidents in scientific laboratories often lead to great discoveries. I'm convinced that theatre also needs to be a place in which accidental discoveries provide the seeds for great work."

For more information:

STAGE: www.stage.cnsi.ucsb.edu