join us Thursday, December 2 at 8pm EST for our annual
EST/SLOAN PROJECT ARTIST CULTIVATION EVENT
A free-wheeling, far-ranging discussion between scientists and playwrights about science, story-telling, and what makes plays work. Our annual EST/Sloan Project Artist Cultivation Event is a great opportunity for any playwright interested in developing a play about science & technology.
So far, this year's panelists include Jad Abumrad (founder/co-host of Radiolab), Sam Chanse (What You are Now, 2022 EST/Sloan), Karine Gibbs (Associate Professor in Plant & Microbial Biology at University of California, Berkeley), Lucas Hnath (Dana H., Isaac's Eye, 2013 EST/Sloan), and Mandë Holford (Associate Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center), with moderator Rich Kelley.
Applications for this year’s EST/Sloan commissions are open now through January 15, 2022.
This virtual event will be held on Zoom and is free to attend, though registration is required. Once registered, you will receive the event access link in your confirmation email - be sure and hold onto it!
THIS YEAR’S PANELISTS
Jad Abumrad is the host and creator of Radiolab, a public radio program broadcast on nearly 600 stations and downloaded more than 12 million times a month as a podcast. He employs his dual backgrounds as composer and journalist to create what’s been called “a new aesthetic” in broadcast journalism. He orchestrates dialogue, music, interviews, and sounds into compelling documentaries that draw listeners into investigations of otherwise intimidating topics, such as the nature of numbers, the evolution of altruism, or the legal foundation for the war on terror. Abumrad has won three George Foster Peabody Awards, and in 2011, he was honored as a MacArthur Fellow. He also created and hosted three seasons of More Perfect, a series about untold stories of the Supreme Court, which The New York Times called “. . . possibly the most mesmerizing podcast.” And in 2019, he co-created Dolly Parton’s America, a Peabody Award-winning nine-part series that explores a divided America through the life and music of one of its greatest icons.
Sam Chanse’s plays include Monument, or Four Sisters (A Sloth Play); Trigger; Fruiting Bodies; and What You Are Now. Her work has recently been developed with The Civilians, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ars Nova, NAATCO, Magic Theatre, Ma-Yi, and the Lark, and is published by Kaya Press (Lydia’s Funeral Video) and TCG (The Kilroys List). Commissions include NAATCO (Out of Time), Workshop Theatre, and EST/Sloan Project. She is a past fellow at MacDowell, the Lark Venturous Fund (Trigger), Cherry Lane Mentor Project (The Opportunities of Extinction), and Playwrights Realm (The Other Instinct), and an alum of New York Stage and Film’s inaugural NEXUS project, Ars Nova’s Play Group and the Civilians R&D Group. She has also received residencies from Sundance Theatre Institute, Djerassi, and SPACE at Ryder Farm. A native New Yorker, she served for some years as artistic director of San Francisco-based Kearny Street Workshop. She is a writer on ABC’s The Good Doctor, and has taught at Columbia University, NYU, University of Rochester, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, Dramatists Guild, and WGAE, and a resident playwright at New Dramatists.
Dr. Gibbs studies big, complex behaviors of small organisms, particularly bacteria’s ability to recognize themselves and form territories, much like how birds flock together and wolves form packs. In her lab, they use molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, and live imaging (at both macro and micro scales) to characterize subcellular processes and cellular development and visualize and quantify social behaviors. Focusing on the shape-shifting, fast-moving bacterium Proteus mirabilis, her research tackles questions such as: how does a sense of identity shape the way bacteria assemble and move as a collective, and in turn, how does this affect growth and virulence?
Dr. Gibbs joined the University of California, Berkeley as an Associate Professor in Plant & Microbial Biology in 2020. Previously, she was an Associate Professor in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University and a recipient of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering. Dr. Gibbs received a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington. Running is a favored hobby, having trained and competed in high school and collegiate track and field. She has had some of her most fascinating conversations during shared morning jogs at conferences or bicycle rides home from the lab.
Lucas Hnath received a 2017 Tony Award nomination for Best Play with A Doll’s House, Part 2. Hnath’s other plays include Hillary and Clinton, The Thin Place, Red Speedo, The Christians, A Public Reading Of An Unproduced Screenplay About The Death of Walt Disney, Issac’s Eye, and Death Tax. He has been produced on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre, Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, and Ensemble Studio Theatre. His plays have also premiered at the Humana Festival of New Plays, Victory Gardens, and South Coast Repertory. He is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, and an alumnus of New Dramatists. Awards: Whiting Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Kesselring Prize, Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, Obie Award for Playwriting, Steinberg Playwright Award, and the Windham-Campbell Literary Prize.
Dr. Mandë Holford is an Associate Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at The American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine. Her research, from mollusks to medicine, combines -omic technologies with chemical biology to examine venoms and venomous animals as agents of change and innovation in evolution and in manipulating cellular physiology in pain and cancer. She is active in science education, advancing the public understanding of science, and science diplomacy. She co-founded Killer Snails, LLC, an award winning EdTech learning games company. Her honors include being named: a 2020 Sustainability Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Breakthrough Women in Science by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NPR’s Science Friday, a Wings WorldQuest Women of Discovery fellow, an NSF CAREER awardee, and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. Her Ph.D. is from The Rockefeller University, USA.
Rich Kelley has served as the Science Press Liaison for The EST/Sloan Project since 2009. He also contributes interviews and blog posts to the EST/Sloan blog and creates panels for post-performance talkbacks. A book publishing veteran, Rich is currently VP/Strategic Partner with Bridget Marmion Book Marketing, where he specializes in content development, email marketing, online advertising, SEO, social media coaching, and website optimization.
Photo Credits: Lizzie Johnston (Jad Abumrad), Adam Sings in the Timber (Karine Gibbs), DFinnin_AMNH (Mandë Holford)