PUBLICATIONS
ESSAY: WOMEN AND SCIENCE
ESSAY: IDENTITY AND GEOGRAPHY
PLAYWRIGHTING

I have written three plays since the earlier 1990s.

"Fools Gold" deals with how my small scientific community (electrochemistry) dealt with the Cold Fusion fiasco. What interested me was how various members of our community chose to react to the news that Cold Fusion had been obtained and what that tells us about how science operates. This play had a reading at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. It is written in verse and is modeled, loosely, after the musical Candide.

"Jessie and the Fat Man" continues to explore the same theme: ego. Here the focus is on what is allowed of an individual when that individual has been deemed "creative". In certain circles that person is not expected to have social skills or obligations that most of the rest of humanity have. The story has famed archietect Mies van der Rohe's ghost called forth to by a teen woman of color who is mourning the death of her brother in a public high rise shoot out. The shooting is based on the true story of Dantrell Davis. This play had a directed and staged reading at Loyola.

The third play moves along the creative continuum to explore how our technological and/or scientific achievements allegorically represent our creative (artistic and reproductive) impulses. The title, "House of Butterflies" derives from the name given to tetraethyl lead factories where lead poisoned workers would stare off into space and grab at hallucinatory butterflies. The story follows one day in the life of a worker and telescopes from present to far mythological past through the human history of lead. This play had directed reading in Seattle 2005 and at Loyola in 2006.

Alanah Fitch, 2005