Indra’s Net Theater received 4 award nominations from Bay Area Theater Critic’s Circle:

“Best Original Script”
“Best Principal Actress in a Play”
“Best Entire Production – East Bay”
“Best Entire Production – Bay Area”

“GoldStar Rating” 4.7 (out of 5)
TBA/BATCC “Recommended Production”

RAVES for The Secret of Life

“… emotionally fulfilling as well as intellectually stimulating.”
–TheatreStorm Read Review

“Laura Lowry sizzles as the antisocial, no nonsense Franklin”
–For All Events Read Review

“… the sense of excitement… is contagious.”
–Sam Hurwitt, San Jose Mercury News Read Review

 

Indra’s Net Theater’s world premiere production of

The Secret of Life

by Bruce Coughran

Venue:   Berkeley City Club, 2415 Durant Ave, Berkeley, CA

Dates: Dec 22, 2015 – Jan 14, 2016

Cast:

Laura Lowry                                     Rosalind Franklin
Sam Tillis                                            Francis Crick
Alan Coyne                                        James Watson
Matt Weimer                                   Maurice Wilkins
Luke Brady                                        Raymond Gosling
Robert Shryock                              Peter Pauling

Creative Team:

Bruce Coughran                             Director
Alexandra Frappier                      Producer
Nikita Kadam                                   Stage Manager
Tura Franzen                                     Props
Chris Houston                                  Composer/Sound Designer
Hamilton Guillen                            Lighting Designer
Karen Sue Hickey                           Costume Designer
Rebecca Castelli                              Dialect Coach
Ann Higgins                                        Graphic Designer

 

Story:

It is early in 1951.  In  Cambridge, England a precocious 23-year old American, James Watson, arrives to work at Cavendish Laboratories and is put into a shared office with 36-year old English graduate student Francis Crick.   Several miles away in London, a brilliant British cryptographer, Rosalind Franklin, comes back from 3 years in Paris to work at Kings College Laboratories, and is given an assignment to work with a new sample of pure DNA, unknowingly intruding on the work of Dr. Maurice Wilkins at the same lab. The two groups will clash and chafe, and within a year one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century will emerge; the structure of the DNA molecule. The discovery will be called one of the most important in the history of Biology.  Francis Crick referred to it simply as The Secret of Life.

This play explores the fascinating relationships between these two teams of scientists, and the entertaining play of events as they headed for the unexpectedly ground-breaking discovery.  You’ll never look at a double helix molecule the same way again!

 

This play is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Raymond Gosling, Emeritus (July 15, 1926-May 18, 2015), “the gentle man of DNA.”