Trinity Hosts World Premiere of Best New Play about Science and Technology

Posted on: 23 October 2012

Ear to the Edge of Time, winner of the prestigious STAGE International Script Competition for the best new play about science and technology, had a special staged reading at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College Dublin on October 21st last. The cast features some of Ireland’s leading actors:  Lorcan Cranitch, Simon Delaney, Rosaleen Linehan, Pauline McLynn, Hugh O’Conor, Marcella Plunkett and Killian Scott.

STAGE – Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration – is housed at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California in Santa Barbara. STAGE came to Dublin this year through the efforts of CRANN, the Science Foundation Ireland funded nanoscience institute based at Trinity College Dublin, and as part of Dublin City of Science 2012.

Playwright Alana Valentine with actors Rosaleen Linehan and Pauline McLynn

The winning script, by Australian playwright Alana Valentine, was selected by a world-class panel of judges: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Tony Kushner, David Lindsay-Abaire and Donald Margulies, and Nobel Laureates Robert C. Richardson, Frank Wilczek and David J. Wineland. The play was singled out of hundreds of entries hailing from a dozen countries. The STAGE award is coveted among playwrights for the prestige and opportunities it brings, as well as for its sizeable $10,000 prize.

In Valentine’s Ear to the Edge of Time, a contemporary radio astronomer faces a desperate crisis about gender politics, attribution, and the role of team work in 21st century science. The play deals with the fascinating machinations of astronomical physics, as well as the dilemmas, compromises and culture that are part of scientific discovery.

Speaking on the occasion of the reading, Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, Executive Director at CRANN said: “We are delighted that Dublin has been chosen to host STAGE this year and that we have actors of the highest calibre participating.  STAGE is a wonderful opportunity to communicate science to the public in a meaningful but fun way. The fact that Dublin was chosen from a host of international competitors, is recognition of the esteem in which Ireland is now held as a science nation.”