Winner of STAGE International Science and Technology Best New Play Makes World Premiere in Dublin as Part of Science 2012, Oct 21

EAR TO The Edge OF TIME, winner of the prestigious STAGE International Script Competition for the best new play about science and technology, will receive a special staged reading at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College Dublin today, October 21st, at 4:00 pm. The cast features some of Ireland’s hottest actors: Lorcan Cranitch, Simon Delaney, Rosaleen Linehan, Pauline McLynn, Hugh O’Conor, Marcella Plunkett and Killian Scott.

STAGE – Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration – is housed at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California in Santa Barbara. STAGE comes to Dublin this year by the efforts of CRANN, the Science Foundation Ireland funded nanoscience institute based at Trinity College Dublin.

The winning script, by Australian playwright Alana Valentine, was selected by a world-class panel of judges: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Tony Kushner, David Lindsay-Abaire and Donald Margulies, and Nobel Laureates Robert C. Richardson, Frank Wilczek and David J. Wineland. The play was singled out of hundreds of entries hailing from a dozen countries.

The STAGE award is coveted among playwrights for the prestige and opportunities it brings, as well as for its sizeable $10,000 prize. Immediately prior to the reading of her play, Ms. Valentine will be receive her prize this Sunday from David Awschalom, an award-winning physicist and director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and Nancy Kawalek, founder and director of STAGE. Ms. Kawalek will also direct the reading.

Speaking in advance of the reading, Dr. Diarmuid O’Brien, Executive Director at CRANN said, “We are delighted that Dublin has been chosen to host STAGE this year and that we have actors of the highest calibre participating. STAGE is a wonderful opportunity to communicate science to the public in a meaningful but fun way. The fact that Dublin was chosen from a host of international competitors, is recognition of the esteem in which Ireland is now held as a science nation. Congratulations again to Alana, and I look forward to the reading of her script in the Samuel Beckett this weekend.”

Ms. Kawalek shared Dr. O’Brien’s enthusiasm: “It’s an honour and a great pleasure for STAGE to collaborate with CRANN this year. Creativity and innovation, whether of a scientific and/or an artistic nature, are what drive civilisation and culture toward excellence. By joining forces, STAGE and CRANN are sending and celebrating that message across the 2012 City of Science and beyond.” In addition to heading up STAGE, Ms. Kawalek is a professional director, actor and writer, as well as a professor at the University of California.

In Valentine’s EAR TO The Edge OF TIME, a contemporary radio astronomer faces a desperate crisis about gender politics, attribution, and the role of team work in 21st century science. The play deals with the fascinating machinations of astronomical physics, as well as the dilemmas, compromises and culture that are part of scientific discovery.

Sunday’s performance is a free public event with a limited number of tickets available here.

CRANN (http://www.crann.tcd.ie/), the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices, is Trinity College Dublin’s largest research institute and a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET), which partners with University College Cork (UCC). CRANN is focused on delivering world leading research and innovation – through extensive proactive collaborations with industry and through commercialisation of intellectual property. Since its foundation, CRANN has obtained €200M of competitive funding from Government, Industry, the European Union and Philanthropy. CRANN is comprised of a team of over 300 researchers, led by 18 Principal Investigators (PI’s), each of whom is an internationally recognised expert in their field of research. It is interdisciplinary, working in partnership with the Schools of Physics, Chemistry, Pharmacy, and Pharmaceutical Science, Medicine and Engineering based at Trinity College Dublin, as well as the School of Chemistry at University College Cork. CRANN is also co-host to CCAN, the Competence Centre for Applied Nanotechnology, which facilitates industry collaboration to develop nano-enabled solutions for Irish-based companies.

STAGE (www.stage.cnsi.ucsb.edu), a unique collaboration between the arts and sciences, is housed in the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), an esteemed science institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. STAGE is engaged in two primary activities: The STAGE International Script Competition (www.stage.cnsi.ucsb.edu/competition), that awards a $10,000 prize to the best new play about science and technology; and the STAGE Collaboratory (www.stage.cnsi.ucsb.edu/collaboratory), a developmental lab where professional artists create multi-media theatre pieces in which science and technology play prominent roles in content and/or form. 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.

Alana Valentine, from Sydney, Australia, writes plays that engage with the real-life stories and voices of Australian communities. She has received numerous awards, including the 2004 Queensland Premier’s Award for Best Drama Script, the 2003 New South Wales Writer’s Fellowship, the 2002 Rodney Seaborn Playwrights’ Award and an International Writing Fellowship at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. She has also been granted two Australian Writers Guild awards, the ANPC/New Dramatists Award in NYC, a Churchill Fellowship for England and Ireland, and a New South Wales Premier’s Award. In 2000, she received a Centenary Medal for her work on the Centenary of Australia’s Federation.

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