Curtain Raiser

Plymouth plans the Theatre of Science

The south-west is home to a pioneering programme linking science and the performing arts

Theatre and science are both driven by inspiration and creativity – and both are live experiments with no guarantee that things will go to plan. They happen in real time and never produce exactly the same results.

Now a year-long experiment – designed to find out what happens when you mix theatre and science, and whether the resulting ‘compound’ can be used to catalyse public engagement with science – is being developed and run by a partnership between the Theatre Royal Plymouth and the Peninsula Medical School, led by Rebecca Gould.

The Theatre of Science, funded through a £250 000 Society Award from the Wellcome Trust’s Engaging Science Programme, builds on two plays, commissioned as a result of ‘Imagining the Future’ – a script-development workshop held in February 2003, which brought together playwrights, theatre practitioners and scientists. Seeing Without Light by Simon Turley explores new developments in HIV immunity and attitudes to the disease in its African context (see box below). Special by Peter Morgan is concerned with the medical and cultural history of eugenics and its contemporary resonance in modern genomics.

“One of the key aims of the Theatre of Science is to attract and develop new audiences for both science and theatre,” says Jo Loosemore, Education Projects Manager at the Theatre Royal Plymouth. “So each production will inspire and shape an intensive programme of public outreach projects and events – including discussions and performance pieces – to engage audiences of differing ages and abilities.”

These will involve working with local community groups specifically associated with the issues that the science presents. The Plymouth Eddystone Trust, which offers support and information for those with HIV/AIDS, will be the community partner for Seeing Without Light. And a local centre supporting teenage parents, the Nomony Centre, will be the partner for Special. “Getting families in a family centre to explore issues of sterilisation and selective breeding will make the issues particularly alive and debatable,” says Jo Loosemore.

In parallel, schools education projects will feed into the science and citizenship curricula. Students from the Peninsula Medical School, researchers specialising in either HIV or eugenics, community groups and theatre practitioners will all work with local schools. Their input will enable science and drama teachers to devise and develop performance pieces exploring the issues raised in Seeing Without Light and Special.

The theatre will be working closely with the Peninsula Medical School and Creative Partnerships – a government initiative aiming to animate learning in schools. It fosters partnerships between schools and creative organisations, and individuals such as architects, theatre companies, museums, orchestras, film-makers, website designers and many others.

Inspiring

Another aim of the Theatre of Science is to nurture the scientists of the future. The Peninsula Medical School’s widening participation programme aims to give secondary students in disadvantaged areas the opportunity to engage in clinical- and science-based activities – and inspire them to think about a career in medicine or science (see feature on New doctors). The Theatre of Science schools projects will help extend and develop this work.

Theatre of Science will include an ambitious live performance piece, bringing together Peninsula Medical School students, scientists, theatre practitioners and dancers, and community theatre participants of all ages. The Human Journey, the brain child of Professor John McLachlan (also discussed in New doctors), will be a living experiment using dance, new technology and music to explore the science of ageing through movement. Aspects of the performance will be held in every room of TR2, the Theatre Royal Plymouth’s spectacular new £8 million production and education centre, and animate the entire building.

Other strands of the project will provide medical and nursing students with the chance to embrace the cultural and contextual learning that theatre can offer, while further experimental work will be conducted in the Theatre of Science Laboratory – a working group of scientists, clinicians, therapists, dancers, new media practitioners and musicians. The Laboratory team will develop a series of experiments exploring new ways of combining science and theatre.

Imagining the future

We are just 20 minutes into the first day of ‘Imagining the Future’. Jeff Teare, theatre director and impresario of science-dramas past, present and to come, has his fingers crossed. He has just asked all those present – four actors, several scientists, some theatre practitioners, and four writers – to strike a couple of attitudes…to make ourselves into our own personal picture of:

1.An actor

2.A scientist

We can’t help ourselves. Fey, loose-jointed actors are, with grim inevitability, followed by rather severe, possibly even demonic, scientists. Jeff uncrosses his fingers – the stereotypes are exactly as he predicted. Our work can begin.

‘Imagining the Future’ was a week of collaborations hosted by the Theatre Royal Plymouth at its newly opened education and production centre – TR2.

As one of the four writers, I must admit that at the outset the cistern of my ignorance was deep and murky. I had hurriedly read a pop-science book on cloning. I’d also been visited

by recovered memories of traumatic moments in the school laboratories of my boyhood: magnesium burning white; a telescope made out of various lenses and a meter rule; a set of sheep’s lungs being enthusiastically reinflated by an ageing, stooping teacher with an unfortunate resemblance to Igor.

In the bright new spaces of TR2, however, I got a wholly new experience of science. We were challenged not just to listen but also to think, to speak and to do. Penny Fidler, of At-Bristol, set us ethical dilemmas to consider regarding the use of stem-cell research. Jane McHarg, of the Peninsula Medical School (PMS), gave us an insight into the working life of the scientist; she explored the parallels between bench science and cooking; she introduced us to the notion of ‘junk data’. John McLachlan took us through a stunning visual sequence of the development of the human embryo. We discussed classical utilitarianism and its edgy successors. We visited the University of Plymouth and encountered bench scientists in their natural habitat.

Towards the end of the week, Jeff Teare presented the writers with a challenge: make some theatre out of any or all of this. To lever us to work he gave us a sequence of scenarios concerning the use of stem cells. I chose one about utilising DNA from people with an apparent immunity to HIV and my play, Seeing Without Light, was begun.

If Professor Guy Claxton is right, and intelligence is the state of “knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do”, then I have ‘Imagining the Future’ to thank for moving me closer to such a state. At the start of the week I didn’t even know that I didn’t know…Now I was able to map the topography of my ignorance thanks to a group of scientists who made themselves available while I wrote my play.

Penny read an early draft and swiftly offered detailed notes. Jane explained why stem cells would be irrelevant in the field of research of my fictional scientist – she also put me in touch with Professor Tony Pinching (PMS). Tony read a later draft and offered not only scientific illumination, but also some dramaturgical insights. Tony put me in touch with Jane Anderson and her work with groups of African women living with HIV in London. Everyone has been enthusiastic, meticulous and generous in their responses to my work; I am incredibly grateful to them all, and of course to Jeff Teare who has overseen the play from its inception.

Seeing Without Light has now received rehearsed readings at TR2, RADA, and at the Pulse Conference at Manchester. The field-testing will soon be over. The play goes into production at the Theatre Royal Plymouth in January 2005.

External links

Theatre Royal Plymouth

Curtain Raiser

Plymouth plans the Theatre of Science

Inspiring

See also

External links