The Nature of Things
by Michael Barakiva
Nov 11th | Tue | @ 7pm
Lucretius may not appear to be anyone special in Rome, circa 55 BC. He’s the son
of a freed slave and he works in a tavern to pay for school. But he will
do what he must to gain respect and win the heart of the boy of his
dreams, even if that means coming up with a theory of the nature of
everything. A modern play about ancient times.
Paradise
By Laura Maria Censabella
Nov 14th | Fri | @ 7pm
A Yemeni-American girl with a secret. A disgraced scientist forced to
teach in the public schools. Eternal questions about love. What is the
formula to Paradise here on this earth?
The Elementary Space Time Show
A musical by César Alvarez
Nov 18th | Tue | @ 3pm
A disillusioned teenager named Alameda finds herself trapped in a cosmic
vaudevillian game show. By confronting avatars of scientific truth,
ostentatious musical numbers, and inappropriate dance sequences, Alameda
acquaints herself with the enigmatic laws of the Universe. A story of
how a hard shell of hopelessness might be cracked open by awe.
The Mermaid Hour
By David Valdes Greenwood
Nov 20th | Thu | @ 7pm
Working class parents Pilar and Bird scramble to keep up with their impulsive
transgender daughter Vi, who’s angling to start puberty-blocking
treatments. When she posts a video of her story on the internet, it
forces Pilar and Bird to question what it means to be "good parents" in
the face of the unknown.
Where Ever it May Be
A musical by Matt Schatz
Nov 24th | Mon | @ 7pm
Hugh Everett III’s “Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics” proposes an
infinite number of universes, where everything that could have happened
in our past, but did not, has occurred in some other universe. Everett
died in 1982, his wife Nancy in 1998. But in other universes, they are
alive and well. In other universes, they are merely alive. Or at least
one of them is. This is their story.
Ruth
by Agnes Borinsky
Dec 4th | Thu | @ 7pm
How can you model the currents that shape a life? In the early 50s in
Boston, in the shadow of Norbert Wiener, a father remarries, a brother
gets in trouble, and Danny sorts inputs from outputs, pitches from
catches, cybernetics from baseball.
Chatterbots
by Olivia Dufault
Dec 11th | Thu | @ 7pm
Each year Hugh Loebner awards the Loebner Prize: $100,000 to the creator of
the first artificial intelligence that can convincingly pass as human.
For 16 years he has held the competition; for 16 years it has been a
spectacular failure. But this year is different because, for the first
time, there is the potential for a machine that's just as human as you,
or me, or Hugh Loebner himself.