Ensemble Studio Theatre to Present FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL Beginning Tomorrow

Ensemble Studio Theatre (Estefanía Fadul and Graeme Gillis, Co-Artistic Directors) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director) have announced the lineup for the 2023 First Light Festival, part of the EST/Sloan Project to develop plays exploring science and technology.

The 2023 First Light Festival will run from May 7 - June 23 and includes six public readings; two closed readings for internal development; one satellite event; and a Youngblood Brunch, in conjunction with the festival, which will feature five short plays by members of EST's early career playwrights collective. The Satellite Reading of The Kit: Made by Martha will be at Alchemical Studios (50 W 17th Street, 12th floor).

All First Light Festival presentations are free and will be held at Ensemble Studio Theatre (545 W. 52nd St., 2nd Floor), except for the Satellite Reading. Reservations are strongly recommended and can be made at EnsembleStudioTheatre.org/FirstLight.

Since 1998, the EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project has developed hundreds of new plays that challenge and broaden the view of science in the popular imagination. Over the past 25 years, the EST/Sloan Project has fostered over 300 plays about science and technology, leading to productions across the country. Each play's life onstage begins with the First Light Festival, an annual presentation of new readings, workshops, and productions. Mary Elizabeth Hamilton's Smart, originally commissioned and developed through the EST/Sloan Project, had its world premiere this spring at EST.

The 2023 First Light Festival includes free public presentations of the following works-in-progress as well as a Satellite Event:

ReWombed

By Nikki Brake-Sillá
Thursday, May 18 at 3:00 pm

ReWombed asks, in a world where nothing is believed until it can be replicated, when did science lose its faith?

PIN.

By Sam Mueller
Thursday, May 25 at 3:00 pm

In a world structurally designed around binary gender and sex, what would it mean to not only protect trans-nonbinary kids, but to also let them thrive?

Las Borinqueñas

By Nelson Diaz-Marcano
Thursday, June 1 at 3:00 pm

Everyone remembers who created the birth control pill but nobody remembers the women that made it possible. This is their story.

Hello, World

By Margot Connolly
Directed by Alex Keegan
Thursday, June 8 at 3:00 pm

In a coding competition, two teams of teenage girls need to create an app that changes the world for the better - but who decides which app and cause is most worthy?

S P A C E

By L M Feldman
Directed by Larissa Lury
Thursday, June 15 at 3:00 pm

Drawing on history (female aviators, Congress, Civil Rights, & the Space Race), S P A C E unearths the forces at work in our time - and imagines a radical re-start.

With Fellowship

By Amanda Keating
Thursday, June 23 at 3:00 pm

Women scientists study the fossilized dental plaque of medieval nuns while one of those nuns is hard at work illuminating manuscripts, the latest plague raging around her.

Satellite Event: Developed with support from BECHDEL PROJECT'S year-long ROO Residency

The Kit: Made by Martha

By Jeanne Dorsey
Sunday, May 7 at 3:00 pm & Monday, May 8 at 7:00 pm
Alchemical Studios (50 W 17th Street, 12th floor)

The Kit: Made by Martha explores the life and work of Martha Goddard, inventor of the first standardized rape kit.

In addition, the 2023 First Light Festival will include the following plays, presented by invitation only, for internal development:

APPLE BOTTOM

By Karina Billini

When a humble neighbor, Andrea, and social media influencer, Belinda, arrive as new post-BBL patients, Apple Bottom Spa struggles to keep both women and the house afloat.

SPRAY

By Emily Chadick Weiss

Rachel Carson sparked the environmental movement of the 1960s with her research on deadly insecticide while stuck with a trying nephew and resisting romance with a woman.

The YOUNGBLOOD SCIENCE BRUNCH, presented in collaboration with the First Light Festival, will be held on Sunday, May 21 at EST. Tickets for this event are $25 for general admission and will be available beginning May 12th. The Brunch will feature new short plays centered on science and technology by Jake Brasch, Phanésia Pharel, Lizzie Stern, Danny Tejera, and Susan Yassky.

ABOUT THE EST/ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY PROJECT:

The EST/Sloan Project (Graeme Gillis, Program Director; Linsay Firman, Associate Director), a pioneering collaboration between the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is designed to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling new theatrical works that explore the worlds of science, technology, and economics and to challenge existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in popular culture. Since its inception in 1998, the EST/Sloan Project has commissioned, developed, and produced over 300 staged plays involving over 1,000 playwrights, actors, choreographers, composers, and theatre companies nationwide. Recent notable plays include what you are now by Sam Chanse, Behind the Sheet by Charly Evon Simpson, Isaac's Eye by Lucas Hnath, Fast Company by Carla Ching, and Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler.

ABOUT THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION:

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York-based, philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants for research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.

The Foundation has an active theater program and commissions about 20 science plays each year from the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, and The National Theatre in London, while supporting select productions across the country and abroad. The Foundation's pioneering theater program began with a 1997 grant to Ensemble Studio Theatre for Arthur Giron's play about the Wright Brothers, Flight, and has helped usher in the science play as a regular part of the theater canon, making Sloan a coveted commission for any playwright engaging with a science and technology theme or character. Beginning with such renowned science plays as David Auburn's Proof, Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, and Alan Alda's QED, recent grants from Sloan's Theater Program have supported Mark Rylance's Dr. Semmelweis, Mary Elizabeth Hamilton's Smart, Anchuli Felicia King's Golden Shield, Sam Chanse's what you are now, Charly Evon Simpson's Behind the Sheet, Lucy Kirkwood's Mosquitoes, Chiara Atik's Bump, Nick Payne's Constellations, Lucas Hnath's Isaac's Eye, Anna Ziegler's Photograph 51, Leigh Fondakowski's Spill, and Bess Wohl's Continuity. The Foundation has also supported a 32-play radio series through L.A. Theatre Works. For more information, visit www.sloan.org or follow @SloanPublic on Twitter and Facebook.

ABOUT Ensemble Studio Theatre:

Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) was founded by Curt Dempster in 1968. In 2023, EST established a new shared leadership model with Estefanía Fadul and Graeme Gillis as Co-Artistic Directors following the recent retirement of Artistic Director William Carden. In over 50 years, EST has developed thousands of new American plays and has grown into a company of over 600 actors, directors, playwrights, and designers.

EST's mission is to develop and produce original, provocative, and authentic new work. A dynamic community committed to a collaborative process, EST is dedicated to inclusion across all aspects of identity and perspective, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexuality, physical or mental ability, physical or mental health, and recovery while acknowledging and working to end systemic marginalization and oppression at all levels of its organization. EST discovers and nurtures new voices and supports artists throughout their creative lives. This extraordinary support and commitment to inclusivity are essential to yield extraordinary work.

EST's primary programs include Youngblood, a collective of emerging professional playwrights; the EST/Sloan Project, a partnership that commissions, develops, and produces new works about science and technology; and the biennial Marathon of One-Act Plays, a landmark New York theatre festival since 1977. For more information, visit www.estnyc.org.

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