This National Science Appreciation Day, celebrate the groundbreaking women who revolutionized science! These inspiring musical and plays bring to life the stories of trailblazing astronomers, chemists, and inventors who defied the odds and shaped our understanding of the world.
Musicals
Miley Chase®: The Science Ace; Music and Lyrics by Dylan MarcAurele, Book by Mike Ross, Story by Larry Little
While calculating the exact date the asteroid hit the earth and destroyed the dinosaurs, 10-year-old science whiz Miley Chase accidentally discovers the secret to time travel. She’s putting the finishing touches on her time machine when her nemesis Tyler, the snotty, spoiled next-door neighbor, arrives to gloat over his win at the science fair. Despite Miley’s warnings, Tyler gets a little too curious about the machine—and accidentally sends them both to prehistoric times.
They’ve arrived, according to Miley’s calculations, on the same day that the asteroid is about to hit the earth. Their biggest problem: the time machine is badly damaged from the crash landing. It is up to Miley and Tyler to work together to avoid being dinosaur dinner and fix the time machine before the asteroid hits. Using their resourcefulness to build new parts for their ship, the two learn they can accomplish anything if they really try, and that an open and inquisitive mind can turn old enemies—and even long-extinct carnivores—into new friends.
Plays
Ada and the Engine by
Photo by Dan R Winters Photography, 2018 Know Theatre production
As the British Industrial Revolution dawns, young Ada Byron Lovelace (daughter of the flamboyant and notorious Lord Byron) sees the boundless creative potential in the “analytic engines” of her friend and soul mate Charles Babbage, inventor of the first mechanical computer. Ada envisions a whole new world where art and information converge—a world she might not live to see. A music-laced story of love, friendship, and the edgiest dreams of the future. Jane Austen meets Steve Jobs in this poignant pre-tech romance heralding the computer age.
The Apiary by
Photo by Sara Krulwich, 2024 Off-Broadway production
It’s twenty-two years in the future, and honeybees are nearly extinct except for those kept alive inside of labs. Zora is overqualified for her new job at one of these labs, but she’s there because she loves bees—or what is left of them. Her stressed supervisor, Gwen, has learned to keep her head and budget down so her research doesn’t get discontinued. Zora, however, doesn’t mind spending her own time and money to try to rehabilitate the bee population. When an unfortunate incident leads to a boost in the bees’ numbers, Zora and her coworker Pilar have to decide just how far they’re willing to go to keep the population growing. An unsettling and sharp-witted cautionary tale, The Apiary warns that the key to protecting each other and the planet is right in front of us, if only we would listen.
The Half-Life of Marie Curie by
Photo courtesy of Lauren Gunderson
In 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. By 1912, she was the object of ruthless gossip over an alleged affair with the married Frenchman Paul Langevin, all but erasing her achievements from public memory. Weakened and demoralized by the press lambasting her as a “foreign” Jewish temptress and a homewrecking traitor, Marie agrees to join her friend and colleague Hertha Ayrton, an electromechanical engineer and suffragette, at her summer home in England. THE HALF-LIFE OF MARIE CURIE revels in the power of female friendship as it explores the relationship between these two brilliant women, both of whom are mothers, widows, and fearless champions of scientific inquiry.
Photograph 51 by
Photo by Johan Persson, 2015 West End production
A humorous and moving portrait of Rosalind Franklin, one of the great female scientists of the twentieth century, and her fervid drive to map the contours of the DNA molecule. A chorus of physicists relives the chase, revealing the unsung achievements of this trail-blazing, fiercely independent woman. A play about ambition, isolation, and the race for greatness.
Silent Sky by
Photo courtesy of Lauren Gunderson
When Henrietta Leavitt begins work at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, she isn’t allowed to touch a telescope or express an original idea. Instead, she joins a group of women “computers,” charting the stars for a renowned astronomer who calculates projects in “girl hours” and has no time for the women’s probing theories. As Henrietta, in her free time, attempts to measure the light and distance of stars, she must also take measure of her life on Earth, trying to balance her dedication to science with family obligations and the possibility of love. The true story of 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific discoveries, when women’s ideas were dismissed until men claimed credit for them. Social progress, like scientific progress, can be hard to see when one is trapped among earthly complications; Henrietta Leavitt and her female peers believe in both, and their dedication changed the way we understand both the heavens and Earth.
Behind the Sheet by
Photo by Sara Krulwich, 2019 Off-Broadway production
In 1840s Alabama, Dr. George Barry is on the verge of a miraculous cure: treatment for fistulas, a common but painful complication of childbirth. To achieve his medical breakthrough, Dr. Barry performs experimental surgeries on a group of enslaved women afflicted with the condition. Based on the true story of Dr. J. Marion Sims, the “father of modern gynecology,” Behind the Sheet remembers the forgotten women who made his achievement possible, and the pain they endured in the process.
Becoming Dr. Ruth by
Photo by Carol Rosegg, 2021 Museum of Jewish Heritage production
Everyone knows Dr. Ruth Westheimer from her career as a pioneering radio and television sex therapist. Few, however, know the incredible journey that preceded it. From fleeing the Nazis in the Kindertransport and joining the Haganah in Jerusalem as a sniper, to her struggle to succeed as a single mother newly-arrived in America, Mark St. Germain deftly illuminates this remarkable woman’s untold story. Becoming Dr. Ruth is filled with the humor, honesty, and life-affirming spirit of Karola Ruth Siegel, the girl who became “Dr. Ruth,” America’s most famous sex therapist.
Wit by
Photo by Sara Krulwich, 2012 Broadway production
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the brilliant and difficult metaphysical sonnets of John Donne, has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. Her approach to the study of Donne: aggressively probing, intensely rational. But during the course of her illness—and her stint as a prize patient in an experimental chemotherapy program at a major teaching hospital—Vivian comes to reassess her life and her work with a profundity and humor that are transformative both for her and the audience.
The Hard Problem by
Photo by Sara Krulwich, 2018 Off-Broadway production
Hilary, a young psychology researcher at the Krohl Institute for Brain Science, is nursing a private sorrow. She needs a miracle and prays daily for deliverance from a secret regret. Meanwhile, she and the other researchers at the institute are grappling with the troubling “hard problem,” which asks: If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? For Hilary, the possibility of genuine human altruism, without a hidden Darwinian self-interest, depends on the answer.
The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow by
Winner of a 2006 Obie Award for Playwriting
Jennifer is just an average girl who re-engineers obsolete missile components for the U.S. Army from her bedroom. When she decides to meet her birth mother in China, she uses her technological genius to devise a new form of human contact. Rolin Jones’ irreverent “techno-comedy” chronicles one brilliant woman’s quest to determine her heritage and face her fears with the help of a Mormon missionary, a pizza delivery guy, and her astounding creation called Jenny Chow.
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by
Winner of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Frowzy, acid-tongued Beatrice Hunsdorfer, supporting herself and her two daughters by taking in a decrepit old boarder, wreaks a petty vengeance on everybody around her. One daughter, Ruth, is a pretty but highly strung girl subject to convulsions, while the younger daughter, Matilda (“Tillie”), plain and almost pathologically shy, has an intuitive gift for science. Encouraged by her teacher, Tillie undertakes a gamma ray experiment with marigolds that wins a prize at her high school—and also brings on the play’s shattering climax. Proud and yet jealous, too filled with her own hurts to accept her daughter’s success, Beatrice can only maim when she needs to love and deride when she wants to praise. Tortured, acerbic, slatternly, she is as much a victim of her own nature as of the cruel lot that has been hers. And yet, as Tillie’s experiment proves, something beautiful and full of promise can emerge from even the most barren, afflicted soil. This is the timeless lesson of the play and the root of its moving power and truth.
The Effect by
Photo by Matthew Murphy, 2016 Barrow Street Theatre production
Hearts racing. Minds reeling. Knees buckling. Connie and Tristan have palpable chemistry—or is it a side effect of a new antidepressant? They are volunteers in a clinical trial, but their sudden and illicit romance forces the supervising doctors to face off over the ethical consequences of their work. The Effect takes on our pill-popping culture with humor and scintillating drama.
The Ruby Sunrise by
Setting off from a farm in Indiana as a young girl named Ruby struggles to turn her dream of the first all-electrical television system into a reality, and jumping forward to a McCarthy-era New York TV studio where Ruby’s heirs fight over how her story should be told, The Ruby Sunrise charts the course of the phenomenon of television: from early idealism and sparks of genius, to promises fulfilled and compromises brokered, and beyond.
They Promised Her the Moon by Laurel Ollstein
The first American woman to test for space flight, Jerrie Cobb, steps into an isolation tank for a record-breaking nine hours as her memories unfold before her, from learning to fly a plane as a child in Oklahoma to testifying in Congressional hearings about the under-the-radar all-female Mercury 13 space program. They Promised Her the Moon is a compelling drama about the challenges of sisterhood and fighting for the greater good, based on a true story.
