collider 2012

Fox Valley Rep's COLLIDER 2012 New Play Project
July 7 - 21, 2012
www.foxvalleyrep.org/Collider

What's your favorite play? Before it became a hit, someone gave it a chance. Now's your turn.
•Four playwrights.
•Four scientists.
•Three incredible new stories.
COLLIDER: NEW PLAY PROJECT shares new stories that focus on the mysteries of the universe as they relate to the human experience. The project is the first of its kind. Three playwrights have been selected and paired with scientists from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to develop new works around the worlds of art, science, and technology.

Join on for the staged readings, or donate to the project at www.indiegogo.com/collider2012:

Quark

By Gloria Bond Clunie of Chicago
Directed by Chuck Smith, member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national theatrical labor union
Staged Reading: Saturday, July 7, 2012 @ 1pm

Gloria Bond Clunie's "Quark" embraces love, death, and the stars when Dr. Alexandra Seabold, an astrophysicist, and her husband Terry, a kindergarten teacher, wrestle with personal tragedy, commercial space travel, and feeding our starving planet as they struggle with -- is "a taste of space" worth it? A highly introspective and very visual play, Quark uplifts as it tackles the challenging themes of death and dying, social responsibility, education and scientific literacy, and love and loss.


Life Electric

By Kevin Kautzman of Texas and Charlies Midwinter of Minnesota
Directed by Ronan Marra
Staged Reading: Saturday, July 14, 2012 @ 1pm

Co-playwrights Kevin Kautzman and Charles Midwinter's "Life Electric" is inspired by James Delbourgo's A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders. The play will take place in the world of the 1740s and 50s and tackle issues around electricity, performance and enlightenment at the root of the American character. The play will explore the diminishment of spectacle and wonder around scientific innovation as electricity (or the "electric fire") moves from the hands of a second-class showman and into the hands of Benjamin Franklin, a man who helped shape America as much as any other in the 18th century.

The Pentaeon (originally titled The Fate of the Universe)

By Monica Byrne of North Carolina
Directed by Reshmi Hazra
Staged Reading: Saturday, July 21, 2012 @ 1pm

Monica Byrne's "The Pentaeon" follows six members of the Caltech astrophysics department as they settle into their annual "The Fate of the Universe" fall retreat at a redwood forest lodge. There, the strongest evidence yet for how the universe will end is presented: in a slow dissipation--the "Big Freeze"-- rather than a reunion, or a "Big Crunch." Over bag lunches, the characters discuss this finding. Their reactions range from logical to emotional, and they begin to question how this finding reflects on the nature of existence itself. On the last day, the group takes a hike in the woods, during which they all become separated and lost, leaving them nothing but time to ponder the fate of the universe.

• Category

  Science & Technology