Damien Atkins's 2007 play Lucy explores teenage autism. Credit: C. ROSEGG

Breaking down the walls that divide scientists from the rest of society is the goal of the First Light Festival of plays about science and technology, produced by the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City, with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The festival celebrates its tenth anniversary this month.

Each year, the theatre solicits proposals for science-related plays, especially those that challenge stereotypes. “The ones that get lost in the research tend to be dry, but those that portray scientists as fully three-dimensional human beings, and show the context of their lives, are more successful,” says current artistic director William Carden.

A dozen projects are awarded grants ranging from US$500 to $10,000, and the annual festival presents the plays in various stages of production during its month-long run. Playwrights are paired with academic advisers, such as physicist Brian Greene and biologist Darcy Kelley.

This year's productions include Pure by Rey Pamatmat, about the British mathematician Alan Turing; The Flower Hunter, a specially commissioned work by distinguished playwright Romulus Linney, which dramatizes the life and work of William Bartram, one of America's first naturalists; and Amy Fox's play about sudden infant death syndrome, By Proxy.

Founded as a developmental theatre in 1972 by the late Curt Dempster, who served as its artistic director for 35 years, the Ensemble Studio Theatre's reach is much greater than its modest home on West 52nd Street in Manhattan suggests. It nurtures new artists and plays by commissioning works and offering ongoing development and a venue.

Past plays have featured celebrated actors such as Cynthia Nixon, and have gone on to theatres around the world to much acclaim. Noteworthy productions include Arthur Giron's Moving Bodies, which dramatized physicist Richard Feynman's colourful life and career, Paul Mullin's Louis Slotin Sonata, about the fatal slip of a Los Alamos physicist, Bob Clyman's Secret Order, on battles between scientists on the verge of a breakthrough in cancer research, and String Fever by Jacqueline Reingold, which infuses string theory into the romantic life of the main character.

A New York Times reviewer wrote in 2006 that the series was “always guaranteed to send audiences out with plenty to think about”. Although the cultural impact is difficult to gauge, exposing theatregoers to nuanced portrayals could reshape the view of scientists in the popular imagination.