SCIENCE, STORY AND THE DISCOVERY OF SELF
SCIENCE, STORY AND THE DISCOVERY OF SELF
JACOB BERKOWITZ
Science, Story, and Discovery of Self
THE ANNIVERSARY
A futuristic family drama that gets at the ancient roots of what it is to be human -- or not.
WINNER, PRIX RIDEAU AWARD, 2022: OUTSTANDING NEW CREATION
WINNER, PRIX RIDEAU AWARD 2022: OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION
Evelyn Carlyle married the perfect man and created her ideal family. But when her three adult children return home to celebrate their parents’ 30th anniversary, her creation starts to look like a failed lab experiment.
Choice, identity and the nature of connection collide in a gripping exploration of the intimate role of science and technology in our lives. How does technology shape our deepest familial relationships in ways we don’t understand or even recognize?
What does it mean to grow-up in an age when technology gives us once impossible choices?
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"What an interesting play! Berkowitz’s new play, The Anniversary tackles several significant topics including how family dynamics are evolving in the face of burgeoning technologies, and the complicated relationships between humans and their Artificial Intelligence (AI) creations."
--Barbara Popel, Apt 613 Theatre Critic
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“Riveting. A first-rate concept and script.”
---Randy Boswell,
Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication
Director Kevin Orr staged The Anniversary in-the-round, the first such staging in the University of Ottawa's new state-of-the-art LabO Theatre.
The Cast (left to right):
Ludmylla Reis as Marley; Eve Beauchamp as Cordelia; Hugh Neilson as Adam; Puja Uppal as Sarah; Kristina Watt as Eve
The Anniversary was a featured performance at the 2022 Canadian Science Policy Conference. This special Arts-Science collaboration, the first theatre performance as part of the CSPC, included a post-show panel discussion on issues of AI, family and society.
ENTANGLED
Nominated PRIX RIDEAU AWARD, 2019: OUTSTANDING NEW CREATION
On his deathbed, Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli gasped one last word: Jung! It was December 1958. Pauli was finally speaking a truth that seeing death’s door called out of him – his secret friendship with pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Jung.
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Entangled is about the largely unknown 25-year friendship between these two intellectual giants of the 20th century. As a play of ideas and personalities, their relationship contains enormous dramatic tension: between the head and heart; physics and the mind; truth and fiction; reason and emotion; consciousness and the unconscious.
Entangled explores the dynamic of Jung and Pauli’s complex relationship as doctor and patient, as two great intellects, as archetypal father and son and finally as that most ethereal yet powerful of connections - friends.
“Astute and moving.”
---Patrick Langston, Artsfile
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“This rich, fascinating play deserves a wide audience. A magnificent piece of theatre and of history!”
---Barbara Popel, Apt 613 Theatre Critic
“Entangled is a beautifully magnetic force. Positively superb to watch.”
Actors David Frisch and Paul Rainville at one of many sold out performances at Ottawa's LabO Theatre.
Entangled was featured as one of three physics-related plays in the National Arts Centre (NAC) of Canada's Theatre and Physics Symposium in 2021. As part of this, Entangled was produced as a radio play and streamed across Canada. Jacob Berkowitz curated the three play-related panels and discussion themes. The event was turned into twoCBC Radio IDEAS episodes, including Physics and Theatre: What Quantum Physics can Teach us about Human Relationships featuring Berkowitz.
Quantum Dreams: New Play Explores Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli’s Relationship:
From Page to Stage:
Pauli (David Frisch), Stage Manager (Jane Osborn), Pauli (Paul Rainville)
with playwright Jacob Berkowitz.
ISRAEL
An intimate solo show about finding our own land of milk and honey,
and the ghosts we wrestle with to get there.
How is it that I'm sitting shiva, the Jewish period of mourning, for a grandfather who mourned my birth?
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In search of an answer, Israel takes the audience on an intimate journey into the lives, loves and losses of four generations of men. The story travels from a New York's Lower East Side in 1910, to Nazi-occupied Denmark, a botched circumcision in Jerusalem in 1964 and a failed Bar Mitzvah in small town Ontario in the 1980s. Israel powerfully combines personal narrative, oral history, and political-social commentary into an exploration of how we must travel a winding road back through thoughts, memories, feelings and relationships to finally arrive home in ourselves.
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