
Performance: 7.30pm Thursday 27 May
Auditorio 2, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon
Free entry
Staminalia is the story of a stem cell researcher and a mother who sees ethical and political limitations impacting not only into her scientific freedom, but also into her private life, where she is challenged by the conflicting ideas of a "theocon" teenage daughter.
Valeria Patera (www.valeriapatera.it), writer and theatre director, is the president of TIMOS Teatro eventi - an Italian group that promotes creative dialogue between Art & Science, pursuing a new model of representation that captures voices and issues of contemporary life across art and science. Staminalia is Patera's latest step of a "science-in-theatre" series that has already featured plays about Alan Turing, Max Perutz, and Charles Darwin.
Staminalia will premiere in late 2010 as a full-length production in Italy. This special 30-minute production was especially created for the ESTOOLS symposium in Lisbon, as a joint effort of EU networks toward public outreach.
The play is inspired by the book "Staminalia. Le cellule etiche e i nemici della ricerca" by Armando Massarenti, (Nature 456, 444-445, 2008) and this premiere performance in Lisbon was reviewed in Nature and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The intense creation comprises a performance by two actresses and two dancers that integrates with an orginal video projection and soundtrack. The video projection incorporates 20 images from the ESTOOLS Photo-Exhibition Smile of a Stem Cell that was created by ESTOOLS scientists (see the article in Stem Cell Research Art and Human Embryonic Stem Cells: from the bench to the high street).
STAMINALIA is the first step - the theatre - of two new linked activities about "SCIENCE ON STAGE". The second step in the development of Science on Stage is the film, BEHIND THE SCIENCE - a videoproject focusing on what happens behind the scenes of a complex international scientific endeavour. DOWNLOAD A CARTOLINO (7MB pdf) about both steps in "Science on Stage".
STAMINALIA: VIEW THE THEATRE TRAILER (3'10") - click the image below
ESTOOLS are available to answer your questions. Please don't hesitate to contact us on the details below:
E-mail us: info@estools.eu
Call us: +44(0)1142221083