Speak Out for Science

The Protest Plays Project invites Creative Resistors around the globe to join us in lending an artistic hand to March for Science by organizing creative events in support of the March

The MARCH FOR SCIENCE is scheduled for April 22nd, 2017 (Earth Day) – which means Creative Resistors have just enough time to plan some theatrical support! Your event can be anything creative: a reading of plays, poetry, or short fiction; a science-based art challenge/showing for local artists; science or Earth day inspired performance art; a science based spoken word & music coffee hour… The possibilities are endless (even if your budget isn’t)! Every single person working in support of the march is an invaluable member of the resistance!

If you are a Creative Resistor who wants to get involved, please consider the following:

Is a March for Science slated for your city? If so, why not march during the day and hold your creative event in the evening? This way you can meet fellow science supporters and marchers can join you for your theatrical protest (preferably with a drink in their hands) after they march. Check March for Science’s Satellite Marches page to see if your city is listed. (You can also sign up to organize a march in your city if it isn’t already on the list).

If you want to get creative, but aren’t sure if you can wrangle an event on your own, why not reach out to other creative organizations in your area to see about combining efforts? Maybe your local community theater would like to do a play reading, the local gallery an art showing, and your favorite local bar a spoken word night? Band together – there is strength (and moral support) in numbers!

Remember: Your event doesn’t have to be fancy! You know what makes a play reading successful? Human connection (*snacks and something tasty to drink also help!) Invite people over to your house to connect & talk about the March’s mission, or organize a gathering at a local bar to read some plays over cocktails. Have a picnic with friends where you write poems about climate science or about the importance of the scientific method, and then shout them out on a street corner! This event can be whatever YOU have the capacity to make it be. The key word is here YOU. You can be involved and make a difference in your community – you don’t have to fly to DC to participate, and you don’t have to be “fancy” or an experienced artist to be an effective Creative Resistor!

If you decide to use plays from this site for your Speak Out 4 Science event, all we ask is that you tell us which plays you will be reading when you Register Your Event so that we can notify the playwrights where their work is being read.

The following plays are being shared by playwrights wishing to support the March for Science. These plays are available for royalty-free readings by Creative Resistors the weekend of the march!

*You must be a member of the New Play Exchange to access these scripts. The New Play Exchange recently changed their basic free membership option to a paid only plan ($7) . We apologize to non-NPX members who might not otherwise need access to plays via the New Play Exchange. We are working with playwrights to offer these scripts outside the NPX, but until then ask that you bear with us.*

A Drop in the Ocean, by Allie Costa
#Climate #Love #Ocean #Drought
Two scientists looking for hope in dry times find that they may be able to draw hope from one another. Script

A Mistress Called Science by Wendy-Marie Martin
#sciencefiction #genetics #allfemalecast #10minuteplay #spermdonor #comedy
If you want it done right, do it yourself. When the last male sperm donor dies before making his first (and final) contribution to science, the women who created him are forced to find another solution to ensure the future of their society. SCRIPT

Algorithm Man by John Blais
#behavioral science
This is a ten minute play with two actors. they can be either man or woman. One is teenage or younger. The narrator explains the working of the mind while the other character enacts those actions. SCRIPT

Boxes are Magic, by Allie Costa
#SmallCast #GlobalWarming
Yasmine is always trying to get Cali to try new things, so when she asks her to get in a box so they can go on a “trip”, she’s understandably skeptical…
Script

Breaking Gulf News by Phil Paradis
#environment #playsforcleanwater #pollution #ocean #oilspill #10minuteplay
Network news anchor interviews the CEO of a big oil company and a Coastguard spokesman about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup. The Coastguard spokesman chastises the CEO about lingering pollution in the Gulf and its impacts on wildlife as the CEO attempts to buy the Guardsman’s silence. SCRIPT

Burst by Philana Omorotionmwan
#Bubbles #Imagination #Children
A child’s imagination battles facts, but is one truly less magical than the other? SCRIPT

Death of a Snowman by Daniel Guyton
#globalwarming #climate #10minuteplay
A snowman and a little girl discuss the afterlife in this existential Yuletide comedy. SCRIPT

Esotropia by Zach Trebino
#historicalfigures #galileo #ptolemy #discoveries #physics #15minuteplay #space
A conflict between paradigms: ptolemy versus galileo; observation versus assumption; perfection versus perfection. SCRIPT

Evolution Fast Track by Micki Shelton
#evolution #allwomancast #10minuteplay #mothers #womensliberation #anthropology #experimentaltheatre, #comedy
From Eve, to Pandora, to Hillary’s use of a private email server, it seems that women are blamed for flipping everything. If time isn’t linear, could we–maybe?–change that? SCRIPT

Finding Neoplasms by Diana Burbano
#Cancer #Family #Medicine

A child with cancer seeks to lighten the burden for his family. SCRIPT
Fossil Lady by Claudia Haas
#historicalfigures #womenscientists #discoveries #paleontology
n spite of discovering some of the more extraordinary fossil finds of her time, Mary Anning finds herself dismissed by scholars and in such dire straits that she is selling all her worldly goods. SCRIPT

Geological Additives by John Weagly
#playsforcleanwater #1MinutePlay #Environment
Does it really matter how clean our drinking water is? SCRIPT

Hadron Collision Therapy by Stefan Lanfer
#particlephysics #marriagetherapy #scienceasmetaphor #10MinutePlay
This play centers on Brent and Gina, a couple in their 30s, who subject themselves to a new method of marriage therapy inspired by the Large Hadron Collider experiments in Cern, Switzerland. Like the sub-atomic particles in those experiments, Brent and Gina race back and forth across the office of Dr. Justine Behrens, their therapist and the method’s eccentric pioneer. As the couple accelerates to impossible speeds and smashes into one another, Dr. Behrens draws out the devastating truths laid bare as a result. SCRIPT

Hot Planet by Tovya Jacobs
#science #global warming #environmentalism #climate
A kitchen-sink sex-comedy about science. Sal is pulling an environmentalist’s Lysistrata, no sex until global warming is resolved. Mara, however, is convinced something deeper is going on, and her secret weapon: a shocking truth about climate-change conspiracy, 4 billion years in the making. SCRIPT

If Everyone on Earth Dies, I Can’t Graduate by Louis F Janeira #climatechangeplays #spiritualresponseplays #environmental #science #10minuteplay #comedy #genetics #war
Gehovia wants more than anything to graduate with her class. But her doctorate thesis project has run into a big snag. Every living thing on the planet is dying off quickly. To graduate she must find the problem and solve it before the universe as we know it becomes nothing more than an empty card board box with suspended lights in it. SCRIPT

MELT, Stephanie Alison Walker
#GlobalWarming
A glaciologist brings his granddaughter (a climate change denier) on an expedition to measure the ice on earth’s last remaining glacier. Will she see the truth before it’s too late? Or will they both melt with the glacier?
Script

Message From the Future by Bill Dagostino
#1pageplay #sciencefiction #environmentalmessage
Greg Williams V comes bearing a message from the future. SCRIPT

Mother of Chemistry by Rex McGregor
#10minuteplay #historicalplay #chemistry #romance
Paris, 1794. The Reign of Terror is at its height. Antoine Lavoisier, “The Father of Chemistry,” is facing the guillotine. Marie-Anne, his wife and laboratory partner, desperately tries to save his life. SCRIPT

Myrtis by Diana Burbano
#10minuteplay #Anthropology #LatinX #plague
A professor teaches her student facial reconstruction. Written for 365 Women a Year. SCRIPT

Of Mice and Marines by John Yunker
#wildlifeconservation #extinction #humandamage #military #endangeredspecies
When a Marine unwittingly takes a photograph of an endangered species of mouse, a battle is set in motion between the military and environmentalists along the coastal sand dunes of Southern California. SCRIPT

Santa’s Bag Limit by Albert Pergande
#hunting #nuclearwaste #enviromentalwastedangers #10minuteplay #Comedy
Three hunters sit in a deer stand on Christmas Eve, shoot a mutant nuclear powered deer, then learn the true meaning of manhood at the Holiday season as they dance around the campfire naked drinking Rudolph’s blood. SCRIPT

Styrofoam Cup by Judy Meiksin
#nuclearenergy #environmentalscience #ethics
Rebecca Cohen is a young public health practitioner whose mother is a hardcore environmental activist. Rebecca approaches the head of the research and development center of a nuclear power company to persuade her to change the company’s research to a renewable form of energy. The scientist is Rebecca’s estranged grandmother, Grandma Cohen. SCRIPT

Swallowed by Rachel Bublitz
#climatechange #waterlevels #indigenouspopulations #bleak #facts
Three young scientists film their own destruction in an attempt to wake up to the world to the reality of climate change. SCRIPT

Swamp Girl by Marj O’Neill-Butler
#outdoorsportsmanship #environmentalism #environmentalapathy
Mariel, a girl with common sense, tries to get her friend Desiree to be more down to earth as the guy she wants to fix Desiree up with likes his women “natural”. Desiree happens to be a bit of a poser who wears too much makeup and too many labels. When Mariel tells Desiree the boys want to go camping on the first date, the fun begins. A South Florida single who’s more comfortable clubbing, considers an invitation for a blind date to the Everglades. SCRIPT
The Destruction of Wilhelm-Reich by Peter Langman
#science #badscience #scientistsuppression #HistoricalFigures
Genius or lunatic? This play is based on the true story of the controversial psychoanalyst, Dr. Wilhelm Reich, who claimed he discovered orgone energy—the basic life force. In the 1920s he was Freud’s protégé; in the 1930s, he was considered for a Nobel Prize. Yet, in America in the 1950s, he was hounded by the press, persecuted by multiple organizations, had his laboratory shut down and his books burned, and he died in prison. Reich clearly had enemies, but was he also paranoid? Was he a genius, or simply grandiose? And why does society crush those who call for radical change? The script portrays Reich’s life in the 1950s, including the campaign against him, his troubled marriage, his relationship with his son, and his evaluation by a prison psychiatrist to determine if he was sane or not. SCRIPT

Save