Theatre and Science Collide in E.S.T's First Light Fest

Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundaton have announced the 9th annual First Light Festival, which will run from March 28th through April 27th at E.S.T. (549 West 52nd Street) will be highlighted by the New York premiere of David Zellnik's new play Serendib, directed by Carlos Armesto.

According to press notes, "First Light Festival 2007 is a presentation of new works commissioned by the EST/Sloan Project, an initiative designed 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. The Festival runs from March 28th through April 27th. Now in its ninth season, The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project (Carlos Armesto and Graeme Gillis, Program Directors) has premiered over 100 plays, dance and performance pieces, selected from proposals and submissions from around the country.  The EST/Sloan Project is designed to stimulate artists to create new theatrical works exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in popular culture. Each season the EST/Sloan Project commissions and develops new works, and presents the results, at various stages from first readings to fully mounted productions, in the First Light Festival."

Readings and workshops are $10 on a first-come/first-served basis, or free with a Festival Pass, available for purchase at theatremania.com. Tickets for Serendib are $20 during previews (March 28 through April 2nd); regular tickets (April 4th- 22nd) will be $30 with Senior and Student tickets $15 for all performances or free with a Festival Pass. Schedule varies; call for details. To purchase tickets and Festival Passes, and for more information, please call Theatermania.com or at 212-352-3101 or visit E.S.T. on the Internet, at www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org.  A complete festival schedule follows: 

Mainstage Production

Serendib, by David Zellnik, directed by Carlos Armesto
"In order to save their study, a group of field scientists invite a team of filmmakers to document their work on Sri Lankan monkeys, but will the results do more harm than good? A  fascinating combination of puppetry and traditional drama, SERENDIB comically examines the fine line between nature vs. nurture, and just how different we are (or aren't) from primates."

The play will feature Joseph Adams (Broadway: The Real Inspector Hound, A View From the Bridge, The Survivor, John Gabriel Borkman); Linda Powell (On Golden Pond - Broadway, "As The World Turns"), James Rana (Love's Labour's Lost - Royal Shakespeare Company and The Shakespeare Theatre [DC], Macbeth, Mother Courage - Classical Theatre of Harlem); PJ Sosko (Much Ado About Nothing - Folger Theatre, Fixed, Angels in America - Hangar Theatre); along with Geeta Citygirl, Nitya Vidyasagar, and Richard B. Watson.

Serendib will have Scenic Design by Ryan Kravetz; Costume Design by Jennifer Caprio (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee); Lighting Design by Evan Purcell; Sound Design by Graham Johnson; and Original Music by Katie Down.

Readings and Workshops

In addition to the mainstage production, First Light also showcases works in development. Four will have workshops and four will have their first pubic readings..  EST will be happy to make any of these writers and their science advisors available to the press as well.

Reading Week – April 4 – 7
A week of concert readings of plays in development by the EST/Sloan Project

Ever More Intelligent - Monday, April 2, 7 PM
By Alex Timbers, founding member and chief artistic force of Les Freres Corbusier, and director of Heddatron
"Victorian England: two drunken scientists in a laboratory filled with microscopic flesh-eating robots. Uh-oh."

The Great Dismal -Tuesday, April 3, 7 PM
By Gwydion Suilebhan
"At a thriving Christian college, the lives of six diverse people gradually become bogged down in the Great Dismal Swamp, where the Underground Railroad, George Washington's financial failures, and the complexity theory behind firefly blinking patterns all converge to form a fragile but dangerous ecosystem.  Can an entomologist, his undergraduate assistant, his wife, her 'alternative healer,' the mathematician, and the dean of the college figure out what connects them… before it's too late."

Leave a Light On - Wednesday, April 4, 3 PM
Inspired by the Writings of Robert Trivers
By Ann Marie Healy
"Robert Trivers, one of the founding fathers of evolutionary biology, meets his match in Helen Bunwick. As the two scientists spar their way across the political minefields of science and education in the late '70s, they discover deeper motivations for their intellectual quests. The ultimate challenge becomes a research project on deception and self-deception in the evolutionary process. Who is lying to whom? And, in science's survival of the fittest, what will it mean to win?"

Chance & Necessity, Thursday, April 5, 7 PM
By Jon Klein
"Chance & Necessity reveals the secret adventures of Jacques Monod, the Nobel-Prize winning molecular biologist. The astounding events of Monod's early life–battling the German Occupation of Paris alongside his friend Albert Camus, surrendering to an illicit love affair with a young music student, and discovering the bacterial properties that led to Monod's own theories on evolution–are all chronicled and speculated upon by another famous friend–the tortured author, Jerzy Kosinski."

Doctors Jane and Alexander, Friday, April 6, 7 PM
By Edward Einhorn
"Using found, fabricated, and occasionally finagled text, Edward Einhorn explores the life of his grandfather Alexander Wiener, the co-discoverer of the Rh factor in blood, through interviews with his mother Jane Einhorn, a PhD psychologist who recently retired due to a debilitating stroke.   In the course of these interviews his grandfather's ambitions and achievements are contrasted with his mother's and ultimately with his own."

Perfect and Constant, Monday, April 9, 7 PM
By Rob Askins
"It's 1541 and Nicolaus Copernicus is dying in silence. The master behind the modern cosmos refuses to publish his theories. It is up to Georg Joachim Rheticus a brillaint young man with a secret to convince him the world needs to know it moves."

Workshops

The Tallest Building in the World, Friday, April 13, 7 PM
By Matt Schatz
"What drives the quest to create the world's tallest building?  In the 1960s everything seemed possible to the engineers and architect who conceived and built the World Trade Center complex. Based on actual events, The Tallest Building In The World examines what is gained and what is lost when we try to reach the sky."

By Proxy, Friday, April 20, 7 PM
By Amy Fox
"By Proxy follows the story of Sonia, a young doctor working for the top researcher of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, who makes a startling discovery about a closely studied family, which leads to a personal and professional dilemma."

Galois, Tuesday, April 23, 7 PM
By Sung Rno
"Math, love and revolution collide in this music theater piece exploring the romantic life of Evariste Galois, who invented a branch of mathematics, Galois Groups, as a teenager, but died at 21, the victim of a tragic duel over a woman amid the radical politics of France in the 1830s."

Me and Marie Curie, Friday, April 27, 7 PM
By Alec Duffy
"In this magical drama, Madelyn, a 16-year old science whiz, competes to be selected by NASA for the first "manned" mission to Mars.  To help her, she enlists the aid of Marie Curie, who exposes her to the idea that science may ask for more of a personal sacrifice than one bargained for."

Cabaret Scientifique

The First Light Festival will close on Friday, April 27 at 10 PM with a unique evening of science-related cabaret performances.