boom boosts science theatre

The lifeblood of theatre pulses with love, hardship, and self-discovery. But with science... not so much. Laboratory-borne concepts, scientific jargon, and nitty-gritty details can sometimes seem impossible to translate into art, especially on the stage.

Image: Pearson Scott Foresman
Wikimedia Commons

But boom, a one-act piece from playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb now in its second season of performances, does just that. boom addresses ecological succession and evolutionary biology while the play's characters confront a cataclysmic comet strike that threatens to wipe out life on earth. "I was a double major in biology and theatre at Brown [University]," said Nachtrieb, sitting on the stage at the Flashpoint Theater Company in Philadelphia, where boom is running until November 21. "Science, particularly biology, colors my worldview, but art and theatre is what I practice. Writing boom was my attempt to reconcile both these interests into one evening." The play revolves around the intensely awkward, yet magnetic relationship between the two main characters, Jules and Jo, as they deal with a global disaster. Jules, played by Derick Loafmann in the Philadelphia production, is a hyper-enthusiastic, fumbling marine biology PhD student whose field observations of the linkurl:beaugregory damselfish;http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?genusname=Stegastes&speciesname=leucostictus lead him to believe a comet is about to strike Earth. Jo, played by Melissa Lynch, is a female journalism student who's been lured to Jules' subterranean lab by a Craigslist casual encounter ad for a night of "intensely significant coupling." Jules' mannerisms bring him treacherously close to the stereotypical Hollywood scientist role -- mumbling, socially awkward, brilliant, and underappreciated -- but Nachtrieb's humor rescues him from that fate and shapes Jules into a likeable, believable character. Several of Jules' quirks will no doubt be familiar to scientists. For example, the biologist's lab is both his work space and apartment ("My grant doesn't cover housing"), and he believes that duct tape can fix anything, even using it to seal the outside door against the impending comet. A third character, Barbara, played by Susan Giddings in the Philadelphia production, acts as omniscient narrator, describing the interactions between Jules and Jo to a fictitious post-apocalyptic audience. She marshals the scientific themes of the play, often pausing dialogue to analyze it in the broader context of ecological succession.

While boom tries to tackle fundamental scientific and philosophical questions, buying a ticket doesn't mean you'll be sitting through a 90-minute lecture. Nachtrieb employs humor and complex interpersonal relationships to get audience members invested in the story. One particularly memorable scene, with Jules and Jo holed up inside the lab awaiting their inevitable fates, illustrates the playwright's clever use of funny, but believable dialogue. Jo: I'd like some bourbon... on the rocks. Jules: That's one of the truths of biologists. We always have ice. To freeze the things we kill... and for drinks. Through the challenges that Jules and Jo face, the story deals with the philosophical question of "fate versus randomness," says Nachtrieb -- what actually happens before a major moment in evolution? Who are the key players that help jumpstart life after an ecological crash? Nachtrieb says he got a lot of the inspiration to write boom from Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale. In the script's notes, used to help guide the play's director and dramaturge, Nachtrieb includes a passage from the book: The universe could so easily have remained lifeless and simple... just physics and chemistry, just the scattered dust of the cosmic explosion that gave birth to time and space. The fact that it did not... the fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing... is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. boom is also based on concepts Nachtrieb grasped from Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life, particularly "the theory of punctuated equilibrium and the idea of evolution happening in these big bursts of change, as opposed to just a steady change over time," he says. boom is a witty, comical and accessible melding of science and art. And it isn't Nachtrieb's only attempt to pull off such a feat. The playwright has two other plays, Hunter Gatherers and Oh the Nano You'll Know!,that portray science on the stage. "Hunters Gatherers is my attempt to get every single primal urge in a single play, at a dinner party actually," he says. Oh the Nano You'll Know! is a 7 minute play about nanotechnology that was commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The performance consists of two scientists battling, in rhyme, over whose nanotechnology is better. The entire script can be viewed linkurl:online.;http://www.peternachtrieb.com/nano.html Flashpoint Theatre Company in Philadelphia is just one of 14 playhouses performing boom this season. For a list of participating theaters, visit Nachtrieb's linkurl:blog.;http://peternachtrieb.blogspot.com/ For the show's schedule in Philadelphia, please visit Flashpoint's linkurl:website.;http://www.flashpointtheatre.org/
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:Human and monkeys, center stage;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53058/
[6th April 2007]*linkurl:Stem cells, on stage;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/40899/
[12th January 2007]*linkurl:Science plays come of age;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/24160/
[28th July 2006]