Artists and Scientists: Great Minds Think Alike Panel at the 39th Humana Festival of New American Plays

The 39th Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville presented Artists and Scientists: Great Minds Think Alike livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv Saturday 4 April at 9 a.m. CDT (Chicago) / 10 a.m. EDT (New York) / 14:00 GMT / 3 p.m. BST (London). In Twitter, use #HumanaFest and follow @ATLouisville.

Moderated by Steve Cosson, Artistic Director, The Civilians. Panelists: Joe Waechter, Jessica Segall, Ivo Peters, Cynthia Hopkins, and Ruth West.

A panel comprised of artists and scientists examines the similarities in thought and process between their seemingly disparate fields. Through inventive new partnerships, interdisciplinary groups of these like-minded thinkers are exploring new ideas and methods of collaborative discovery, working outside the box and embracing risk as a path to innovation.

This discussion is part of the Louisville Arts and Cultural Attractions Council’s Year of the Environment and Sustainability, the YES! Fest.

Steve Cosson is a director and writer and the Artistic Director of The Civilians. Recent credits include, Pretty Filthy (The Civilians), The Belle of Amherst with Joely Richardson, The Great Immensity (The Public Theater, Kansas City Rep), Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns (Playwrights Horizons, Woolly Mammoth), Dael Orlandersmith’s Stoop Stories, Paris Commune (The Public Theater, BAM Next Wave, La Jolla Playhouse), In the Footprint (The Civilians), This Beautiful City (Vineyard, CTG, Humana Festival), (I am) Nobody’s Lunch (Edinburgh Fringe First Award; Soho Theatre, London), Gone Missing (several US and UK productions and a one-year run Off Broadway at Barrow Street), Ethel’s Documerica (BAM Next Wave), Spring Awakening (Olney Theatre), Anne Washburn’s A Devil at Noon (Humana Festival), and Bus Stop (Kansas City Rep). He was a speaker at the 2012 TED Conference, and this season The Civilians is the first-ever theatre company in residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Joe Waechter is a playwright and theatremaker living in Minneapolis. His works include: the plays The Hidden People, PROFILES, Lake Untersee, and Good Ol’ Boys; two headphone operas, The Hoot Owl and Howard Gap Road; a virtual reality performance, Antarctica; and the short film, Battles of Consecration. His work has been produced or developed at the Guthrie, Workhaus Collective, Playwrights Horizons, Ars Nova, Kennedy Center, and Trinity Rep, among others. Awards include an AracaWorks Prize, Lucille Lortel Fellowship, and the McKnight Fellowship and two Jerome Fellowships at the Playwrights’ Center, where he is currently a Core Writer. He’s been a resident artist at PlayPenn, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Tofte Lake Center, and in 2014 he began developing a new play as part of The Arctic Circle residency. MFA. Brown University.

Jessica Segall is a multidisciplinary artist living in New York City. Her work investigates the link between creativity and survival, engaging current cultural attitudes towards adaptation. Segall’s work has been exhibited at the Havana Biennial, The National Gallery of Indonesia, The Queens Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Inside Out Museum, and The National Modern Art Gallery of Mongolia. She is the recipient of grants from NYFA, Art Matters, the Leighton International Artist Exchange Program, the University of Chicago, and The Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Segall attended artist residencies at Skowhegan, The MacDowell Colony, Sculpture Space, Küenstledorf Schöppingen, Art Omi, Bemis, SOMA, The Arctic Circle, and Socrates Sculpture Park. She is a graduate of Bard College and received her MFA from Columbia University. Segall is a current AIRspace resident and teaching artist at Abrons Arts Center.

Ivo Peters is an experimental physicist working at the University of Chicago, where he is investigating the dynamic behavior of granular suspensions. Before moving to Chicago, he worked at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, where he received his PhD specializing in fluid dynamics. Most of his research involves very fast phenomena, which require high-speed imaging and innovative visualization techniques. One of his recent projects involved the dynamic behavior of ice mélange at a glacier terminus in Greenland, where he found a strong connection to phenomena observed in laboratory experiments with granular materials.

Cynthia Hopkins is an internationally acclaimed musical performance artist. She writes and sings songs, records albums, and creates groundbreaking multi-media performance works that intertwine truth and fiction, blurring the lines between edification and entertainment. Through the process of making performances, she attempts to alchemize disturbance into works of intrigue and hope that simultaneously stimulate the senses, provoke emotion, and enliven the mind. She has produced six performance works and eight albums of original music. Her work has been honored with many awards, including a 2015 award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2007 Alpert Award in Theatre. She is currently creating a musical comedy routine about alcoholism, while working as a performer and composer for multiple projects. cynthiahopkins.com

Ruth West is an artist-scientist—a creative catalyst. She envisions a future in which art and science integration opens new portals of imagination, invention, knowledge, and communication across cultures to create breakthrough solutions for our most pressing global problems. West directs the xREZ Art + Science Lab and is an associate professor at the University of North Texas cross-appointed in the College of Visual Art and Design (New Media Art & Design), College of Information (Information Sciences), College of Engineering (Computer Science), and College of Arts and Sciences (Biological Sciences). She has authored over 70+ peer-reviewed exhibitions, publications, and conference presentations. Her work has been presented in venues including: Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, FILE Festival (Sao Paulo), SIGGRAPH, WIRED Magazine’s NextFest, Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Fowler Museum at UCLA, IEEE Visualization, SPIE/IS&T ERVR, Leonardo, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. viewingspace.xrezlab.com

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.