Contest Play

2006-2007 This year’s play theme is science and / or technology.

Suggestion: 1. research information regarding famous inventors, scientists, or inventions and discoveries and how they came to be.

Example: Penicillin was discovered rather accidentally by Alexander Fleming. “He had a research laboratory at St. Mary's Hospital in London after World War I. His battlefront experience had shown him how serious a killer bacteria could be, much worse even than enemy artillery. He wanted to find a chemical that could stop bacterial infection.

He discovered lysozyme, an enzyme occurring in many body fluids, such as tears. It had a natural antibacterial effect, but not against the strongest infectious agents. He kept looking. Fleming had so much going on in his lab that it was often in a jumble. This disorder proved very fortunate. In 1928, he was straightening up a pile of Petri dishes where he had been growing bacteria, but which had been piled in the sink. He opened each one and examined it before tossing it into the cleaning solution. One made him stop and say, "That's funny."

Some mold was growing on one of the dishes... not too unusual, but all around the mold, the staph bacteria had been killed... very unusual. He took a sample of the mold. He found that it was from the penicillium family, later specified as Penicillium notatum. Fleming presented his findings in 1929, but they raised little interest. He published a report on penicillin and its potential uses in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology.”

See:

Famous Inventions : A to Z http://inventors.about.com/library/bl/bl12.htm

Famous Inventors:

http://www.bkfk.com/inventors/inventors.asp

Inventions and Discoveries:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004636.html

Suggestion: 2. Think about how the parts of something work together and how the “thing” would be if the parts chose not to work together or got into a disagreement.

Example: Think about a cell and how, if the individual parts inside a cell could talk, they would argue and / or work with each other as they competed for energy and space in the cell.

Example: Think about the parts of a computer and how they might interact.

For : How does stuff work?

http://science.howstuffworks.com/

http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/how_it_works/index.html

for cell parts:

http://www.fortbend.k12.tx.us/mastersonline/Ft_Bend_ISD/6306/qvms/johnson/cell_part.htm

Suggestion 3: Think about a global, scientific problem that could be studied by someone and how characters could talk about ways to solve / prevent the problem or live with it. Global problems would include things like global warming, a pandemic (like Avian Flu), effects of nuclear explosions, earthquakes, etc.

Examples: Characters could discuss the causes and the effects of a global problem and decide what to do about it: A character could blame global warming on a character who has a gas-guzzling car and persuade him / her to switch to a solar-powered auto or sell the car and stick to public transportation using new bio-fuels.

Characters could be “germs” representing diseases that were devastating in the past like Bubonic Plague, Smallpox, Tuberculosis. They could talk about how they have been virtually eliminated from the planet through discovery of antibiotics by various scientists.

For Global warming:

http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/letsnet/noframes/subjects/science/b5u1l1.html

For pandemics:

http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/

2006-7 links for plays from Bloomington Playwrights’ Project:

http://www.bloomingtonplays.org/default.aspx?pn=miniplay/miniplay2007&hn=WonderlabExhibitPlayIdeas

http://www.bloomingtonplays.org/default.aspx?pn=miniplay/miniplay2007&hn=ScienceWebSites