Playwright, Neuroscientist, RADIOLAB Host Set for MTC's INCOGNITO Panel

Manhattan Theatre Club, in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, announces the upcoming Sloan Panel Discussion on INCOGNITO, which will be held following the Tuesday, May 17 performance of the play at MTC at New York City Center-Stage I (131 West 55th Street), and is open to anyone attending the evening's performance. The panel will focus on the role of science in the play and will feature playwright Nick Payne and neuroscientist Dr. Daniela Schiller. Robert Krulwich, cohost of NPR's "Radiolab," will moderate the panel.

MTC first collaborated with the Sloan Foundation in 2000 with the production of David Auburn's Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Proof. MTC's partnership with the Sloan Foundation has expanded to include multiple annual commissions for emerging, mid-level, and established writers as well as a production grant to stage Sloan-related works. In addition to Proof, Sloan has supported MTC's productions of Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy in 2003, Rebecca Lenkiewicz's translation of An Enemy of the People in 2012, Sharr White's The Other Place in 2013, Nell Benjamin's The Explorers Club in 2013 and Nick Payne's Constellations in 2015.

In partnership with the Sloan Foundation, MTC has commissioned over 40 writers: Jeff Augustin, Courtney Baron & Juliana Nash, Stephen Belber, Nell Benjamin, Steven Cosson, Glen Berger, April de Angelis, Lisa D'Amour, Charles Evered, Madeleine George, Melissa James Gibson, Daniel Goldfarb, Rinne Groff, Tom Holloway, Samuel Hunter, Ron Hutchinson, Nathan Jackson, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Nick Jones, Lucy Kirkwood, Bryony Lavery, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Kenneth Lin, Craig Lucas, Michael Mitnick, Peter Morris, Hannah Moscovitch, Itamar Moses, Rona Munro, Brett Neveu, Nick Payne, Greg Pierce, Hannie Rayson, Melissa Ross, Heidi Schreck, Mark Schultz, Eric Simonson, Dava Sobel, Simon Stephens, Shelagh Stephenson, Sarah Treem, Catherine Trieschmann, John Walch, Anne Washburn, Jason Wells, Michael West, Beau Willimon, Bess Wohl, Alexandra Wood, and Anna Ziegler.

Nick Payne, the acclaimed writer who brought you the sold-out Broadway sensation Constellations, returns to Manhattan Theatre Club with the American premiere of INCOGNITO, an "astonishing and original" new play (The Telegraph). Incognito features Tony Award nominee and Theatre World Award winner Geneva Carr (Hand To God), Charlie Cox (Netflix's "Daredevil"), Heather Lind (AMC's "Turn: Washington's Spies"), and Drama Desk Award nominee Morgan Spector (Ironbound).

The limited engagement of INCOGNITO began previews Tuesday, May 3 in advance of a Tuesday, May 24 opening night at MTC at New York City Center - Stage I (131 West 55th Street).

A pathologist steals the brain of Albert Einstein; a neuropsychologist embarks on her first romance with another woman; a seizure patient forgets everything but how much he loves his girlfriend. Incognito braids these mysterious stories into one breathtaking whole that asks whether memory and identity are nothing but illusions. Directed by Tony Award winner Doug Hughes (The Father, Doubt, Outside Mullingar), INCOGNITO takes us into the last uncharted realm-the mind.

The creative team for INCOGNITO features Scott Pask (scenic design), Catherine Zuber (costume design), Ben Stanton (lighting design), David Van Tieghem (original music & sound design), Peter Pucci (movement direction), Stephen Gabis (dialect coach), and J. David Brimmer (fight director).

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:

NICK PAYNE. Theatre: Constellations (Broadway premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club), If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet (Bush Theatre and Roundabout Theatre Company, New York), Wanderlust (Royal Court Theatre), Sophocles' Electra (Gate Theatre), One Day When We Were Young (Paines Plough/Sheffield Theatres and Shoreditch Town Hall), Lay Down Your Cross (Hampstead Theatre), Constellations (Royal Court Theatre, Duke of York's and UK tour), The Same Deep Water As Me (Donmar Warehouse, nominated for 2014 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy), Blurred Lines (The Shed, National Theatre), Incognito (Nabokov/Live Theatre, Newcastle), The Art of Dying (Royal Court Theatre), Elegy (Donmar Warehouse). Film: The Sense of an Ending (adaptation of Julian Barnes' Man Booker Prize winning novel for BBC Films/Origin Pictures). TV: "The Secrets" (Working Title TV for BBC One). Awards: 2009 George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, 2012 Harold Pinter Playwright's Award, 2012 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play for Constellations.

DR. DANIELA SCHILLER is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, where she directs the affective neuroscience laboratory. Her research is focused on the flexibility of memory and the blocking of fearful memories. Dr. Schiller's work has been published in numerous scholarly journals, including Nature, Neuron and Nature Neuroscience. Schiller has been the recipient of several awards, including the New York Academy of Sciences Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, and the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences for her research on how to rewire the brain to eradicate fear as a response to memory.

ROBERT KRULWICH is co-host of Radiolab, WNYC's Peabody Award-winning program about 'big ideas' now one of public radio's most popular shows. It is carried on more than 500 radio stations and its podcasts are downloaded over 5 million times each month. He is also the author of the "Curiously Krulwich" blog, featured on National Geographic, where he illustrates hard-to-fathom concepts in science using drawings, cartoons, videos, and more.

Manhattan Theatre Club, under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, has become one of the country's most prominent and prestigious theatre companies. Over the past four and a half decades, MTC productions have earned numerous awards including six Pulitzer Prizes and 19 Tony Awards. MTC has a Broadway home at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) and two Off-Broadway theatres at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street). Renowned MTC productions include Fool For Love by Sam Shepard, Airline Highway by Lisa D'Amour; Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein; Outside Mullingar and Doubt by John Patrick Stanley; The Commons of Pensacola by Amanda Peet; Murder Ballad by Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash; Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney; The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg; Wit by Margaret Edson; Venus in Fur by David Ives; Good People and Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire; The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez; Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies; Ruined by Lynn Nottage; Proof by David Auburn; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch; Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally; The Piano Lesson by August Wilson; Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley; and Ain't Misbehavin', the Fats Waller musical to name just a few. For more information on MTC, visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants in science, technology, and economic performance. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience.

Over nearly two decades, The Foundation's pioneering theater program has helped usher in the science play as a regular part of the theater canon. The aim of Sloan's program is to encourage leading theater artists to explore scientific or technological themes, to write works featuring scientists, mathematicians, or engineers as major characters, and to stage plays with dramatically engaging high-quality science content. Commissioning about 20 new plays each year through its two flagship partners, Ensemble Studio Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club-and working with the National Theater in London, The Magic Theater in San Francisco, the Marc Taper Forum in Los Angeles and Playwrights Horizons in New York, among others-the Foundation has made "a Sloan" a highly coveted commission for any playwright. Beginning with such renowned science plays as Proof, Copenhagen and Alan Alda's QED, more recent grants have supported Anna Ziegler's Boy, Frank Basloe's Please Continue, Deborah Laufer's Informed Consent, a co-production with Primary Stages, Nick Payne's Constellations, a Broadway hit staring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson, Nell Benjamin's The Explorer's Club, Sharr White's The Other Place, Lucas Hnath's Isaac's Eye, and Anna Ziegler's Photograph 51, recently in London's West End starring Nicole Kidman. The Foundation also supports LA Theatre Works' Relativity science series which broadcasts full-length plays commissioned by partner theaters on National Public Radio.

Sloan also has a nationwide film program that includes support of six film schools, screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, the San Francisco Film Society, Film Independent and the Black List, and has helped develop and distribute 17 feature films in the past four years including Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game, Matt Brown's The Man Who Knew Infinity, Michael Almereyda's Experimenter, Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess, Jake Schreier's Robot & Frank, and Rob Meyer's A Birder's Guide to Everything.

For more information on Sloan, visit www.sloan.org.

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