Science as Performance: Communication and Education Using Theater, Music, and Dance

Theater, music, dance, the literary and the visual arts can convey the joys and controversies of science.  We describe a program at the Graduate Center entitled Science & the Arts which is designed to communicate to the public the excitement and wonder of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  Over the past few years there have been major successes in communicating science to the public through the arts.  This is especially evident in theater, film, opera and dance with the recent play as Copenhagen, the Oscar winning film A Beautiful Mind, the opera Doctor Atomic at the Met and the Lerman Dance Ferocious Beauty: Genome.  The performance outreach series Science & the Arts has been developed and tested at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) in mid-Manhattan for more than nine years, see http://web.gc.cuny.edu/sciart/ .  We have established working relationships with actors, playwrights, dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers, artists and scientists who work at the intersection of science and the arts.  In this presentation we illustrate many of our collaborations in theater, dance, music and art.  We describe our national dissemination efforts through the partnerships we developed with diverse colleges, universities, community colleges, educational organizations and community arts organizations in partnering with the Science & the Arts program as a model for developing successful and innovative outreach activities.  Faculty members, professionals and students from the university, other educational institutions, museums, theaters and government laboratories as well as the public with an interest science and arts programs should find this presentation of particular interest.  Supported in part by the National Science Foundation, NSF PHY-0431660