Caitlin Frances, Corey Spruill & Stephen Grenley in Resistant by Celeste Mari Williams, photo by R. Falk

 

Join us on Wednesday, July 21 at 6:00 p.m. PDT for a lively discussion about how theater can energize science communication and science can stimulate theater. Moderated by NSWA Board Member David Mills of Infinity Box Theatre Project, four people who collaborated on science-theater projects will share what they learned from their experience. All are welcome—theater people, science people, communicators in any field.

Watch the Recording:

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Participants:

Elizabeth Heffron is a Seattle-based playwright and teacher. Her plays include Bo-Nita, which received its world premiere at Seattle Repertory Theatre and won the ‘Best Storytelling’ award at the 2019 United Solo Festival in NYC. You can see Bo-Nita at Vashon Repertory Theatre’s summer festival this 7/29 – 8/1 Other works include Portugal, a play about nuclear energy workers, and the one-act Calibration in collaboration with Chet Moritz for Infinity Box in 2016.
Chet Moritz is the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang endowed associate professor in the departments Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rehabilitation Medicine and Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Washington (UW). He also serves as the Co-director for the Center for Neurotechnology. He and his research team focus on developing and testing novel technologies to restore movement and other functions after spinal cord injury.
Celeste Mari Williams is a playwright and biology graduate student who interweaves science and animal behavior with social commentary and humor. While Beaver Town addressed immigration and prejudice through the lens of a beaver family, Gills! Gills! Gills! highlighted the undersea world of mating, gender roles, and species survival. Her recent graduate school projects incorporated short play readings that drew parallels between “invasive” species language and anti-immigration rhetoric through the perspectives of Asian giant hornets and Chinese mitten crabs. Her short play, Resistant, was in collaboration with Chris Tachibana as part of Infinity Box Theatre Project's Centrifuge in 2019.
Chris Tachibana is a science writer and editor. Her professional life includes serving as the senior managing editor of the journal Health Services Research and working with researchers at Kaiser Permanente and Seattle Children's. Her theatre experience includes working with Celeste Mari Williams on Centrifuge and years of clumsy (but fun) improv.
Host David M Mills is the artistic director of Seattle's Infinity Box Theatre Project. "We are about science people and theater people coming together to explore the human consequences of science and technology," says the project's website. Recent events produced by Infinity Box include two series: Centrifuge, in which 5 playwrights partner with 5 science writers to generate and perform 5 plays in 5 days, and Thought Experiments on the Question of Being Human, in which playwrights and scientists explore how technology affects what it means to be human.