While many arts organizations and cultural venues were forced to close or go on hiatus by the Covid-19 pandemic over the past year, nonprofit Livermore Shakespeare Festival (LSF) has found ways to continue its educational work and develop new programming. Science@Play, for example, is a social justice initiative at the intersection of storytelling and science. The program, introduced last August, uses artistic voices to champion scientific discovery and truth-telling and focuses on artists and scientists of color.

As part of Science@Play, early this year the group commissioned award-winning playwright Diana Burbano to write an original work. Burbano, who came to the United States from Colombia as a young child, strives to create diverse, three-dimensional characters on the page and on the stage to inject the play with science that is real and truthful, according to LSF. The company has also partnered with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is working with local scientists on choosing additional plays to be produced for the Science@Play public reading series that will accompany the development of the new work. The culminating program, in late October, will be the premiere of Burbano’s original play about the Covid pandemic and the scientists behind the scenes working to find solutions.

Science@Play is high-quality artistic storytelling of truthful and accurate scientific principles based on collaboration with the Tri-Valley National Laboratories, according to Michael Wayne Rice, LSF Resident Director and Director of the Science@Play program. “We value the arts as a vehicle to help spread the value of science and the positive impact it has had on our lives,” he says.

The new program came about as a result of work by Founding Artistic Director Lisa A. Tromovitch, who had long wanted to collaborate with the National Labs. LSF also wanted to bridge the gap between cultural and racial representation in terms of who writes plays and the characters in them, says Rice. The pandemic presented a natural opportunity to implement the program.

LSF has continued to offer a variety of in-school educational programs ranging from elementary school through college level. All programs are taught by professional teaching artists and align with Common Core State Standards. The group is also holding a series of virtual events called LifeSPARC: The Victory of Spirit that will “explore the human spirit and how it has triumphed in the most difficult of circumstances. Through race, gender, and science, we will explore the human condition including using Shakespeare’s work to frame the stories,” according to Rice.

As part of LifeSPARC, Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender, with internationally renowned theater artist Lisa Wolpe, will be held April 29; Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey, with classically trained actor, producer, and founder of the Harlem Shakespeare Festival Debra Ann Byrd, will be held May 29; and The Sonnet Man: Hip Hop Shakespeare Fusion with rap artist Devon Glover will be held June 24. LSF actors will also hold a virtual live staged reading of a Holocaust play, in partnership with East Bay Holocaust Education Center, on July 22.

Livermore Shakespeare Festival was voted the best live theater by readers of the East Bay Times for three years in a row, most recently in 2020. “One of the significant things to understand about LSF is our dedication to our patrons,” says Rice. “One of the ways that we pay homage to our patrons is to present high-quality art that is accessible. By that I mean, we give academic rigor to the examination of the text and then we translate that into the human condition. We are proud that we often hear people say things like, ‘I understood Shakespeare in a way that I've never understood it before.’ We also take the same approach to contemporary plays. We're focused on giving our patrons the best viewing experience they can have.”

For more information about Livermore Shakespeare Festival, please visit www.livermoreshakes.org.