Plays

Blinded by the Sun

by Stephen Poliakoff
Drama: Scientists squabble as cold fusion goes belly-up.
Links: Amazon (UK)

Copenhagen

by Michael Frayn
Historical drama: Mr. and Mrs. Niels Bohr reminisce with Werner Heisenberg over the uncertainty of memory and quantum mechanics.
Links: Amazon (UK)

Les Palmes de M. Schutz

by Jean-Noël Fenwick
Drama/Comedy: Marie and Pierre Curie discover something hot.
Links: IMBD

An Immaculate Misconception

by Carl Djerassi
Drama: A broody scientist finally gets her gloved hands on some sperm.
Links: our author profile • Amazon (UK)

Oxygen

by Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffman
Drama: Scientists both past and present bicker about who discovered the humble gas.
Links: our author profile • Amazon (UK)

Calculus

by Carl Djerassi
Drama: More bickering (this time about mathematics and the dark side of Isaac Newton).
Links: our author profile • Amazon (UK)

Phallacy

by Carl Djerassi
Drama/Comedy: Art vs. science as a bronze statue catalyzes love and a museum spat.
Links: our review • our author profile • Playwright’s website

Autodestruct: the ultimate cure for cancer

by Lizzie Burns
Drama: A man lives on through an immortal cell culture of himself.
Links: our playwright interview • Playwright’s website

Safe Delivery

by Tom McGrath and Julie Webb
Drama: A story about gene therapy, lab politics and life.
Links: Edinburgh review

Arcadia

by Tom Stoppard
Comedy: Two cultures collide in this classic tale of order, chaos and landscape gardening.
Links: our review • Amazon (UK)

Galileo (Life of Galileo)

by Bertolt Brecht
Historical fiction: The Church battles it out against rationality in this insight-packed masterpiece.
Links: our review • Amazon (UK)

A Disappearing Number

by Simon Burney and Complicite
Historical fiction: A time-bending fantasy account based on the real life of the genius mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Links: Complicite

Proof

by David Auburn
Drama: Catherine struggles to come to terms with the legacy of her mathematician father.
Links: Amazon (UK)

Photograph 51

by Anna Ziegler
Drama: Rosalind Franklin battles with lab politics as much as with the discovery of the structure of DNA
Links: our interview • Amazon (UK)

Experiment With An Air Pump

by Shelagh Stephenson
Historical fiction: Scientists in the past and present grapple with scientific mysteries.
Links: Wikipedia

Lenin’s Embalmers

by Vern Thiessen
Dark Comedy: Two rival chemists must decide how to preserve the deceased leader’s body.
Links: Amazon

Chain Reaction

by Jonathan Alexandratos
Drama: The key scientists at Los Alamos must build the A-bomb and deal with its consequences.
Links: Backstage

Should’ve

by Roald Hoffman
Drama: A chemist takes his own life, blaming himself for putting an easy way to make a neurotoxin into the hands of terrorists.
Links: Play website

Newton’s Darkness: Two Dramatic Views

by David Pinner
Historical fiction: Two plays about two of Newton’s infamous conflicts: one with Hooke, and one with Leibniz.Links: Amazon (UK)

The Hard Problem

by Tom Stoppard
Drama:A researcher tries to understand the nature of consciousness.
Links: Amazon (UK)

Oppenheimer

by Tom Morton-Smith
Historical fiction: A study of the moral issues inherent in being a scientist and a human being
Links: Royal Shakespeare Company

Infinities

by John D. Barrow FRS
Experimental: Five scenarios eplore infinity, mathematics and the concept of life – without a plot or characters
Links: SIAM

Placebo

by Melissa James Gibson
Drama: A clinical trial forms the backdrop for crucial life decisions
Links: Amazon (UK)

Informed Consent

by Deborah Zoe Laufer
Drama: Is DNA is our destiny, and who gets to decide?
Links: Amazon (UK)

Miss Atomic Bomb

by Adam Long, Gabriel Vick and Alex Jackson-Long
Musical: In 1952, a Las Vegas hotel tries to lure in tourists coming to gawk at desert nuclear tests by holding a beauty pageant.
Links: The Guardian 

Calculating Kindness

by Lydia Adetunji and Laura Farnworth, Directed by Laura Farnworth
Musical: A play based on the life of geneticist George Price, the man who tried to use math to explain altruism.
Links: at Camden People’s Theatre 
Links: The Observer 

God’s Dice

by David Baddiel
Drama: What would happen if someone was able to prove, scientifically, the existence of God?
Links: Soho Theatre

The Starry Messenger

by Ira Hauptman
Historical fiction: Galileo’s decision to renounce his discoveries takes a big toll on his family.
Links: Dramatic Publishing

Novels

  • Crossover novels
  • Films
  • Plays
  • TV