I’m the last person in the world to set up my own space startup, but I have a better idea of what might be involved after a week’s worth of whirlwind playwriting for Infinity Box Theatre’s “Centrifuge 2” theater festival.
“Centrifuge 2” was the second running of an exercise adapted from the 14/48 Projects, in which playwrights, directors, actors and other theater people create batches of 14 plays in the course of 48 hours.
My fellow Centrifugers and I had twice that long to come up with 10-minute science-themed plays, plus five-minute introductions by science writers such as myself. But there was no time to waste: The scramble continued all the way up to the first technical run-through on Friday afternoon, followed just a couple of hours later by the premiere.
It all started last Monday night, when I was matched up with playwright Marcy Rodenborn, based on a slip of paper drawn from a jar. I had been kicking around a few ideas, and we quickly settled on a retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin filling in for the warring families.
