playwright Peter Sin Nachtrieb

Q: In the introductory notes for boom, you say something that has resonated with me for a decade—that both biology and theatre are trying to make sense of the world in an epic and intimate way, which is interesting because it seems almost paradoxical, but it isn’t.

A:Yeah! So, I just think the rules are different. They’re both trying to interrogate who we are, and our truth, and I think for me, I really ended up bending towards theatre because I want to be able to ask questions that I can’t answer. And I feel like in science you have to be able to at least attempt to answer the question—but I think even those questions that you can answer by experimental design, they’re often pushing towards the unanswerable question and I think that’s what theatre is about, just leaping into the void a little farther. So, I do think that they’re very interconnected. I wanted to give that poetry, the romance, to the scientific story that also exists in a lot of religions and creation myths.

Brown, my theatre professor Larry Marshall, was running their summer theatre that had sort of a “new play” focus…some people came to see it and I got invited to do a reading at Ars Nova in New York and I think that was the first hint that this play had some traction and some interest beyond what I would normally expect. It happened really quickly—and at the same time a couple of large regional theatres had reached out about it as well. And then it got published and produced all over the place.

what I liked so there’s already some crossover there. I actually have a musical that we premiered in 2019 called “Fall Springs”. It turned into a musical about a town called Fall Springs that’s sinking into the ground because they’re fracking for essential oils underneath it. The daughter of the mayor, Eloise, is a “closeted” scientist—her mom was a geologist who died in a cave accident… this is all like, deliberately inspired by tropes of disaster films.

Q: Had you ever done a musical before that?

A:No, so that was my first full-length musical. It was seven or eight years before we got that premiere production, so y’know, a lot of workshops, a lot of readings…and we’re continuing to work on it.

Q:When you originally decided to pursue a theatrical career, was playwriting the original plan?

Q

:Is the word boom in reference to the Cambrian explosion, the apocalyptic event, or both?

A:Definitely both and probably more things too. It’s the explosions, the radical changes that can happen, whether it’s a comet, a personal epiphany…the title is intentionally lowercase, to create a little tension between the word and how it’s written and I think that’s sort of speaking to the evolutionary story it’s looking at. Sometimes evolution is triggered by major events and sometimes it’s triggered by one little accident that happens to be very successful.

Q:At what point did you realise boom was going to be so successful? Did you have any idea?

A:Honestly, I had no idea…I definitely did not expect when writing it that it was going to be my “moneymaker” so to speak. At

A:Oh no—it was acting first, then directing, then I was doing a lot of writing as well, a lot of sketch comedy. I think there was a moment where I realised I couldn’t mentally sustain being a hyphen—a something-slash-something-slash-something. It felt like I needed to commit more to writing, so I made a commitment to being a playwright first.

Q:So when you were shifting from hyphenate to mostly playwright, did you intentionally think “I’m going to make plays about science” or was it more unconscious?

A:I think it had always been there. I remember also watching a lot of Monty Python, which has a lot of science-y humour in there, that intellectual humour was always

Q: So, any person who makes art that communicates scientific concepts is a science communicator, right? It is a science communication magazine, after all. What do you think the role is of a science communicator?

A:I think it’s so important—it’s to be a translator, in a way. I think the best science writers are the ones who can incorporate that storytelling feel to it, so they create a narrative. I think that if you can present something in a comic way, you can make a deeper impact in someone’s soul. When you open people with laughter, the ideas can drop in a bit more easily.

Jocelin Weiss is an MSc student in Science Media Production and Co-Editor of Video Content at I, Science. She played Jo in the opening scene of “boom” and then was the marine biology dramaturg for a workshop of the play during her undergraduate studies.