LSU SciArts New Play Festival 2025
The LSU School of Theatre and College of Science are excited to announce the return
of the SciArts New Play Festival.
This groundbreaking festival will showcase three staged readings of new accurate science
plays
selected from over 150 submissions across the nation.
Performances
Dates: April 15-17
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Music and Dramatic Arts Building, Studio Theater
Five Degrees Above Polaris
Written by Karen Howes
Directed by Rachel Aker
April 15th 7:00pm
MDA Studio Theater
Set in 1847, Five Degrees Above Polaris follows American astronomer Maria Mitchell as she travels to Rome to challenge the Vatican’s official astronomer, Father Francesco De Vico, who received credit and a medal for the discovery of a comet that was initially sighted by her. While trying to make her mark as a respected scientist, she is swept into a world of stuffy Harvard professors, romantic Italian revolutionaries, and the dogma of Catholicism. But Maria is dead-set on getting the medal that she rightly deserves, which forces her to make unusual choices.
Better Living
Written By Rich Rubin
Directed by Craig Ester
April 16th 7:00pm
MDA Studio Theater
Junior chemist Connie is assigned a secretive task by her 3M supervisor, Paul: to assess PFOS prevalence in the general population. She discovers the fluorochemical is nearly ubiquitous—in human blood, air, water, and soil. Connie's reaction to this shocking discovery is very different from Paul's, leading to escalating conflict and mutual recrimination. Years later, seeking closure, she reaches out to Paul, now suffering from Alzheimer's and barely remembering their disputes. In the end, Connie realizes that, like PFOS, her regrets are permanent.
Alice Wareham and the Fabulation of Time
Written by Catherine Yu
Directed by Barrett Hileman
April 17th 7:00pm
MDA Studio Theater
Alice Wareham is a brilliant physicist who studies black holes. When she is approached by the CIA to become an asset, she agrees, and is whisked away to a lab in Marseille, France. As she strikes up a friendship with the French physicist she is spying on, she wonders if she'll be able to make her breakthrough and save her country before time runs out.
Karen Howe’s plays have been published and produced across the country, winning commissions, grants, and awards including the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Prize, two-time winner of The New Science Driven Play award, nominee for Susan Smith Blackburn, winner of the Bennett Prize, selected for the Women’s Playwright Initiative, and finalist for the Woodward/Newman prize out of over 2000 submissions; additional finalist recognition by Henley Rose, Ashland, Humanitas, Full Circle, NJ Playwrights, Gary Marshall, etc. Other playwriting experience includes theatre outreach and writing musical plays for The William Inge Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Virginia Avenue Project, Fulton County Charities, The Young Actors Ensemble, and The Academy Theatre. In academia, Karen has taught over 50 courses in dramatic writing and literary analysis. Currently, she runs the Playwrights Think Tank for FAIR-Arts and facilitates an online book club called “In Conversation.” She has 4 children, 3 cats, an Australian Shepherd, and a husband.
Rich Rubin’s plays have been staged throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and the Middle East. Full-length plays include Picasso In Paris (winner, Julie Harris Playwright Award); Swimming Upstream (winner, Todd McNerney Playwriting Award; finalist, Reva Shiner Comedy Award); Caesar's Blood (finalist, Oregon Book Award, finalist, Ashland New Play Festival); Shakespeare's Skull (winner, Portland Civic Theatre Guild New Play Award); Left Hook (finalist, Woodward-Newman Drama Award; semifinalist, O’Neill Conference); Assisted Living (winner, Neil Simon Festival New Play Award); One Weekend In October (winner, Playhouse Creatures Emerging Playwright Award; semifinalist, O’Neill Conference); Cottonwood In The Flood (winner, Fratti-Newman Political Play Award); Costa Rehab (finalist, Oregon Book Award); September Twelfth (finalist, Oregon Book Award; finalist, Playwrights First Award); Marilyn/Misfits/Miller (finalist, Julie Harris Playwright Award; semifinalist, O’Neill Conference); Russian Troll (finalist, Oregon Book Award); Book Of Revelation (finalist, Clive Award); Kafka’s Joke (finalist, Woodward International Playwriting Prize; finalist, Oregon Book Award); Dispersion Of Light (semifinalist, O’Neill Conference); Class Act (semifinalist, O’Neill Conference); and Ivory Tower (finalist, Waterworks Festival). Member: Dramatists Guild, New Play Exchange and Portland’s Nameless Playwrights and LineStorm Playwrights.
Catherine Yu is a writer of plays and librettos. Her plays include In Spite of My Ambivalence (2024 Venturous nomination); In Love and Friendship (2023 Austin Film Festival Second Round); Le Jeté (2019 BAPF Semifinalist); The Day is Long to End (2018 University of Florida production); and The Sun Experiment (FringeNYC Excellence in Playwriting; Time Out NY’s Top Ten Nightlife and Music Events of the Week in August 2014).
Doron Weber
Vice President, Sloan Foundation
April 15 | 4:00 PM
Studio Theatre, Music & Dramatic Arts Building
Holden Thorp
Editor-in-Chief, Science (AAAS)
“The Great Work Begins: How the Arts Inform the Way Forward for Science”
April 16 | 4:30 PM Bo Campbell Auditorium,
Cox Communications Center
Holden Thorp became Editor-in-Chief of the Science family of journals on 28 October 2019. He came to Science from Washington University, where he was provost from 2013 to 2019 and professor from 2013 to 2023. He is currently a professor at George Washington University and on leave to serve as the Editor-in-Chief at Science.
Thorp joined Washington University after spending three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he served as the 10th chancellor from 2008 through 2013.
Thorp earned a bachelor of science degree from UNC, a doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, and completed postdoctoral work at Yale University. He holds honorary degrees from Hofstra University and North Carolina Wesleyan College and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Thorp cofounded Viamet Pharmaceuticals, which developed VIVJOA (oteseconazole), now approved by the FDA and marketed by Mycovia Pharmaceuticals. Thorp is a venture partner at Hatteras Venture Partners, a consultant to Ancora and Urban Impact Advisors, and is on the board of directors of PBS, the College Advising Corps, and Saint Louis University. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of the Yale School of Medicine and the Underwriters’ Laboratories Research Institutes. In 2023, STAT named Thorp to its STATUS list of top leaders in the life sciences.
Thorp is the coauthor, with Buck Goldstein, of two books on higher education: Engines of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial University in the Twenty-First Century and Our Higher Calling: Rebuilding the Partnership Between America and its Colleges and Universities, both from UNC Press.
IDoron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, helps the President oversee and improve all aspects of the Foundation’s programs and plays a leadership role in Sloan’s broader philanthropic efforts with the foundation community.
For more than 20 years, Weber has run the program for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology & Economics at Sloan, which uses diverse media—books, radio, television, film, theater, and new media—to bridge the “two cultures” of science and the humanities to give people a keener appreciation for the increasingly scientific and technological world in which we live and to convey some of the challenges and rewards of the scientific and technological enterprise. This seminal program has been recognized with many awards, including an award from WNYC “for providing transformative support for work at the intersection of science, technology, and the arts” and the National Science Board’s Public Service Award “for its innovative use of traditional media—books, radio, public television—and its pioneering efforts in theater and commercial television and films to advance public understanding of science and technology."
For the complete bio vistit the Sloan Foundation website.
Past SciArts Festival Winners
2019
Another Revolution by Jacqueline Bircher
The Surest Poison by Kristin Idaszak
Maize by Judith Pratt