NEA Arts Magazine: Finding Common Ground

“The theater can raise questions that no other medium can raise in quite the communal way a play does. There are issues about science that very often don’t get expressed and don’t get discussed…. [having] to do with the moral dimensions of our research.  We’re trying to find out what the human conditions behind science are, and that’s, I think, one of the greatest values that we have in the theater.”  -Playwright Alan Brody

This fascinating collaboration is happening right in our back yard, over at MIT.

Two faculty members at MIT have partnered up a pair of local theatre companies to bring scientists and theatre artists into regular conversation with one another.  The Underground Railway Theater and the Nora Theater Company, have partnered up with MIT to form the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT (CC@MIT) in order to create and present plays that deepen public understanding of science and technology.

Paulette Beete at the NEA website has written an article discussing how MIT and some other theatre artists have put these two seemingly disparate disciplines (science and theatre) into conversation with one another.  The entire article can be read HERE.