Mad Cow Theatre Announces the 2018 Science Play Festival

Mad Cow Theatre is delighted to announce the 2018 Science Play Festival, running Feb. 23-25 in the Harriett Theatre. This event is the fifth annual Science Play Festival for Mad Cow, which will explore in four play readings the many intersections between art and science.

This year's plays - each to be read by a cast of Mad Cow regulars - will be Laura Maria Censabella's Paradise, Deborah Zoe Laufer's Informed Consent, David Mamet's The Water Engine and David Auburn's Proof.

Paradise, which was commissioned by Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is the story of two outsiders - a gifted Yemeni-American teenager and her disillusioned biology teacher, who form an unlikely scientific partnership in the hope of securing her a scholarship. But when conflicts arise over religion, science, and the boundaries of mentorship, their capacity to alter the course of each other's lives becomes greater than either had imagined. The play premiered in Cambridge, Mass., in early 2017.

In Informed Consent, playwright Laufer explores what happens when genomic breakthroughs happen at breakneck speed. When we can learn more than ever before about what our futures may hold, how much should we learn - and who gets to decide? Inspired by a recent court case between a Native American tribe and an Arizona University, Laufer's play premiered in 2014 as a co-production between the Geva Theatre Center and the Cleveland Playhouse in association with Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project.

The festival also will feature two more familiar works: David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Proof, in which a troubled young woman, whose brilliant but dementia-stricken mathematician father has recently died, wrestles with the question of her own mathematical genius; and David Mamet's The Water Engine, in which radio actors perform a play within a play about a young inventor whose plans run afoul of crooked business interests.

A moderated talkback will follow each reading.
Adam Graham will direct Paradise, Arthur Rowan will direct Informed Consentand Proof, and Cameron Francis will direct The Water Engine.

The reading-series schedule will be:

Paradise, 7:30 p.m. Friday Feb. 23.

Informed Consent, 2:30 p.m. Saturday Feb. 24.

The Water Engine, 7:30 p.m. Saturday Feb. 24.

Proof, 2:30 p.m. Sunday Feb. 25.

All tickets are $12.

The Science Play Festival runs Feb. 23-25, 2018 in the Harriett Theatre at Mad Cow Theatre, 54 West Church St. (second floor) in downtown Orlando (Click here for directions). Performances are at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $12. Tickets are available online at madcowtheatre.com or by calling the Mad Cow Theatre patron services team at 407-297-8788 ext. 1.

Mad Cow Theatre is a 501(c)(3) arts organization funded by the State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs; the Downtown Development Board; the Florida Theatrical Association; Orange County government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs program, and members of the Central Florida community like you.