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We began to foster such interactions with a competition for new plays about science and technology, offering a $10,000 prize to the best new play to explore scientific and/or technological stories and themes. That is how the STAGE – Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration – International Script Competition was conceived. The STAGE Competition was launched in collaboration with the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), one of the prestigious California Institutes for Science Innovation. In addition to the monetary award, winners have opportunities for developing and promoting their winning script.
The Competition is now entering its fourth round. Plays are submitted from all over the world. Last year, we received a play from a remote part of Nigeria, several from established and prominent playwrights, and even one from a Nobel Laureate!
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Based on their extraordinarily fertile partnership on the Competition, the Lab and CNSI have broadened their field of vision and are taking the work to the next level with the STAGE Project. Under this umbrella, the Professional Artists Lab and the California NanoSystems Institute will collaborate internationally with professional artists to create and develop multi-media theatre pieces in which science and technology play prominent roles in content and/or form. This October, work will begin on the first of these theatrical creations: The Brain Project, a multi-media theatre piece about the brain.
The STAGE Project will comprise the core focus of the Lab; it will become a laboratory in which artists create work relevant to the lives we lead – lives influenced by elegant technological and scientific advances – and one in which accidental discoveries can provide the seeds for great work.
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