Cambridge theater and MIT mark 20 years of creating science based plays

CBS News

17-02-2025

CAMBRIDGE - This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Catalyst Collaborative, a relationship between Central Square Theater in Cambridge, and MIT.
It's the longest ongoing partnership between a professional theater and a major research institution in the country, staging and creating plays dealing with science and technology.
Combining science and theater
The collaboration started in 2004, with a series of conversations in informal gatherings.
Co-founder Debra Wise says, "We live in a place that can nurture this kind of program because there are people who expect to be provoked, challenged, as well as entertained when they come to the theater."
Over the past two decades, the partnership has generated 35 productions, five new commissioned plays, and 10 world premieres. The latest piece, "Space", focuses on the history of female pilots and astronauts.
Executive Director, Catherine Carr Kelly explains, "It amplifies these women, many of whom you might say, 'I remember hearing that name somewhere,' and some you would have no idea…. And it juxtaposes that with the congressional hearings about whether or not women should actually go to space or whether or not they're capable of going to space."
MIT professor Alan Lightman is another co-founder. His novel, "Einstein's Dreams", was the first production born from the collaborative, and now dozens followed.
"I think some of the scientists gave ideas, stories of science to the theater people, some of which later became plays. And I think the scientists learned the way that artists think," Lightman tells WBZ-TV.
"Theater can be about everything life is about. The wonders of our natural world, how to understand it, how to understand our part in it," Wise says.
More stories to be told on stage
With the fast-growing field of artificial intelligence, Lightman knows there are many stories yet to be told.
"When an AI can do many of the tasks that we human beings do, what does it mean to be human? We're redefining what it means to be human. And I think that these are issues that the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT can deal with in the future."
For the audience, it's a unique experience
"You can come to a play here, and you can have a conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist about what was in the play. That doesn't really happen anywhere else," Carr Kelly explains.
You can see "Space" at Central Square Theater through February 23rd.