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Experimentation, in both theatre and science, typically involves trying out new ideas. This can mean anything from testing novel hypotheses to trying out new technology on old hypotheses. What seems to differentiate experimentation in the two fields is that science is obliged to represent the results of the experiment as accurately as possible, while theatre, or art, for that matter, has no obligation to represent anything accurately.
As the products of science and technology seem to be ever increasing, so too has their appearance in the work of artists and writers. Government agencies, universities and non-profits have taken note and, in the past decade or so, begun to solicit artists' help in expanding the public's understanding of science and technology. As a result, a number of new programs have sprung up to encourage artists and writers to include science in their work. One such program is the Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) and Sloan Foundation's First Light Festival for theatre with science and engineering themes. The festival is presented in New York every year in April and features the work of writers commissioned by EST/Sloan.
This year, for the first time in its nine-year history, the First Light Festival featured a mainstage production employing non-traditional theatre forms. David Zellnik's play Serendib uses a blend of puppetry and traditional theatre to tell the story of a group of scientists working in the forests of Sri Lanka, studying the sociobiology of toques macaques (monkeys native to Sri Lanka). This small move towards a wider representation of theatre in the Festival is, I think, good for both the dissemination of science as well as the writers participating in the commission process.
The science that inspired Serendib comes from the zoologist Wolfgang Dittus, who has been working with toques macaques for over thirty years now. The cast of fictional characters in the play includes two rival scientists, a Sri Lankan researcher, their housekeeper and a documentary film crew sent by the BBC to record the study. The cast themselves operate the puppets, often playing their characters as observers of the monkeys at the same time they are manipulating the puppets.
While the use of puppets is unusual for the First Light Festival, Zellnik's play is far from radical in form. The puppets are integrated into what is at heart a simple, linear narrative. What is interesting, however, is that the puppets allow the science in the play to be communicated in a way that many science plays seem hard-pressed to achieve—the puppets allow the science to be demonstrated, rather than discussed at length.
Very early in her recently published book, Science on Stage, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr notes that "the science playwright's special problem [is] exposition." Contemporary science has reached a level of complexity that creates a particularly pronounced difficulty in explanation. As I experienced working in a research institute a few years ago, a physicist working in one specialty in the field can easily find themselves struggling to understand the work of their colleagues in a different specialty. And this seems to be true across all fields of science.
The leap, then, to achieving understanding among a non-science-literate public is enormous. Very few science plays attempt to deal with contemporary science at all, tending toward simpler historical tales. In fact, out of the eleven works presented in this year's First Light Festival, only three deal with science of the last thirty years, and of those, two deal directly with human subjects (medicine in the case of By Proxy, by Amy Fox; and the relationship between monkeys and humans in Zellnik's Serendib).
When faced with elusive and complex scientific concepts, writers tend to look for shortcuts or other means of communicating the ideas besides dialogue (examples include John Barrow's Infinities or the work of Complicite, an ensemble led by Simon McBurney that often incorporates science into their devised pieces). Their obligation is to the audience, the creative impulse, to the pace and tempo and performance, not to methodical explanation. Oftentimes, writers avoid putting any real science in their work, and simply refer to it, metaphorically or in rough allusions (e.g. David Auburn's Proof).
Shepherd-Barr's book received some marked criticism from the well-known chemist and writer Carl Djerassi in a recent review he wrote for American Theatre magazine, precisely because she includes many plays in her discussion which don't really deal with the science they mention in any significant way at all. Djerassi, who has written three science plays himself, is deeply committed to a very particular definition of a science play that focuses almost entirely on the absolute accuracy of the representations.
While Djerassi may have a point that Shepherd-Barr's definition of a science play is too broad and inclusive (even she seems to bend her own rules throughout the book), his definition represents the polar opposite—not inclusive at all, not accepting of metaphorical or exploratory use of science or inaccuracies. Interestingly, Djerassi's plays are published by Wiley, the science publisher, largely for their value as science history, not as dramatic literature.
In speaking with one of the First Light Festival's co-director, Carlos Armesto, I asked him about this issue of accuracy and what stance the Sloan Foundation takes on representation of science in the plays they are helping to fund. Armesto noted that part of the mandate of the Sloan Foundation's sponsorship requires the employment of science advisors for each of the productions, in order that the science and also the life of the scientists is accurately depicted. In the case of Serendib, Don Melnick, a professor of conservation biology at Columbia University, and Mary Pearl, a primatologist and current president of the Wildlife Trust, acted as the science advisors, with Pearl attending a number of the rehearsals to work not only with the playwright but also with the actors.
While this kind of close advisory is common in television and film, it seems relatively novel in theatrical productions. When I brought this up with Armesto, along with a question about the possible frustrations that it might bring about for a playwright, he assured me that the writers and advisors find the collaboration to be a fruitful one. But as we spoke further about the commission process it became clear that the writers do often feel weighed down by the research they are asked to undertake and incorporate into their pieces.
The mandate to get it right is a heavy task for artists who have not spent their lives immersed in science. Additionally, the pressure from scientists, like Djerassi, who spend their lives trying to understand specific phenomena, seems to create a natural conflict that might hamper creative work rather than encourage it. Serendib serves as a nice example to illustrate the point that experimentation, even in the relatively familiar form of puppetry, can actually achieve some part of the goal of accuracy at the same time that it serves to communicate complex ideas.
It is true that audiences can easily understand the science in Zellnik's play with little to no science literacy. The hypothesis being presented suggests that status in monkeys has a direct correlation to status in humans. Because the monkey interactions depicted (eating, grooming, mating, and child-rearing) have obvious parallels in human interaction there is no need for further explanation. The most interesting question that the piece seems to raise surrounds the tendency of human observers to see themselves in the thing being observed—in this case, to anthropomorphize the monkeys. This tension is explored in the dialogue, in the manipulation of the puppets and in the conflict between the two rival scientists. The illustrative shortcut that the puppets provide allows the focus to remain on the narrative rather than exposition and the resulting piece is more entertaining for it.
This one trick won't work with all science plays (would that it could!), but it points to the notion that shortcuts, non-dialogic or non-linear elements may actually serve the science better, in terms of the audience's understanding of the science, rather than didactic representations. Shepherd-Barr notes something similar in her book: "…those [science plays] that stretch and prod the norms of accepted theatrical modes have been the most enduring and successful."
EST/Sloan would do well, I think, to encourage more of this in their First Light Festival, rather than shying away from experimentation in the desire to remain appealing to the mainstream. Having started just nine years ago, around the same time that Michael Frayn's Copenhagen premiered and a few years after the premiere of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, it seems clear that some part of the festival's aim is to achieve similarly wide success with its science plays. Interestingly, both Frayn and Stoppard's plays manipulate narrative in significant ways, pushing the boundaries of what one might assume would be appealing to the mainstream.
If achieving greater public understanding of science is as much of the aim of the festival as finding commercial success for the plays, than it's important to ask whether or not people really walk away from the two plays mentioned above with a deeper understanding of the science being discussed. Copenhagen has come under strong criticism from some in the science community for its errors, scientific and historical. And Arcadia, while successful, doesn't necessarily increase the audience's understanding of the complex maths alluded to—more likely, it incites a lingering curiosity in some of the viewers.
On the other hand, plays that challenge the audience to observe a phenomena first-hand, as, in part, with Serendib, or with John Barrow's Infinities (mentioned briefly above), may actually give the audience a deeper sense of what's going on because they teach without instructing. Often dialogue and narrative-heavy work misses the chance to exercise the audience's intellect—the treatment of the science becomes reportage rather than creative engagement. Audiences do appreciate a challenge, but, like most students, I believe they prefer to figure it out themselves rather than have someone explain it to them.
Cover Photo - Carol Rosegg
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