NEA Arts: Finding Common Ground

The newest issue of NEA Arts--A Kind of Beauty--looks at the interesections of the arts and the sciences. While that's a pairing that's been much in the news of late, you might be surprised to find that at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the two disciplines have been BFFs for decades. In the article, "Finding Common Ground," we take a look at one such pairing starring a group of theater artists and local scientists in the best friends roles. Why theater? Playwright Alan Brody explains:

“The theater can raise questions that no other medium can raise in quite the communal way a play does. There are issues about science that very often don’t get expressed and don’t get discussed…. [having] to do with the moral dimensions of our research. We’re trying to find out what the human con­ditions behind science are, and that’s, I think, one of the greatest values that we have in the theater.” 

Visit arts.gov for the full text of the article and more from Brody and his partners, including novelist and physicist Alan Lightman, and theater heads Debra Wise and Mimi Huntington.