Science on stage An interview with playwright

Lights up on a subterranean laboratory on a research university campus. Jo, a female undergraduate, has just arrived in response to an online post promising a night of “intensely significant coupling”. Unbeknownst to Jo is that Jules, the male marine biology PhD student who wrote the post, is gay, and has invited Jo due to (correctly) predicting an oncoming apocalypse based on years of observing fish behaviour. Therefore, he needs a fertile female with which to re-populate the human race. In the end, it’s unnecessary as two of his fish lay eggs, allowing the chordate evolutionary chain to begin anew. Oh, and one last twist… the entire universe of the subterranean lab is part of a science museum exhibit operated by curator Barbara—asking the audience to play the role of both the scientist and the museum guests by watching the specimens in the tank and how they interact. After a workshop over the summer of 2007, it got picked up by Ars Nova, now one of the top Off-Broadway theatres for bold new work including Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (which then ran on Broadway and garnered twelve Tony nominations, the most of any show that season). From there, boom…if you’ll forgive the pun…exploded, becoming the most performed play in US regional theatre in the 2009-10 season and continuing to regularly appear on college, community, and professional stages today.

Peter Sin Nachtrieb has written many plays, particularly dark comedies that ask scientific questions—and they’ve been performed on stages all across the United States and the world. I sat down (okay, I zoomed) with Nachtrieb on a crisp Friday afternoon, where we talked science, theatre, and bridging the gap between the two.