Anuj Chakrapani: Could you tell us a little bit about Queen and why it’s touted as the “environmental drama that is the perfect play to engage tech-focused Silicon Valley audiences”?
Miriam Laube: Madhuri Shekar, our playwright, was born in San Jose and raised in India and abroad, but she sets the play at the University of California at Santa Cruz and references the scientific community at Stanford. So the play literally takes place in this backyard. In short, the story of Queen involves two very bright PhD students, Sanam and Ariel, who have been working for six years to prove that neonicotinoid pesticides, made by Monsanto are responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder.
Very briefly, Colony Collapse Disorder is a name for the disappearance of bees. The bees don’t just die, they disappear. As they are about to reap the benefits of their rigorous study by publishing a career-defining article, Sanam stumbles on an error in their calculations. We witness what happens to their friendship when they challenge each other’s professional and personal integrity standing on opposite sides of the philosophical question “does the end justify the means?” Do they compromise or stand firm on ethical scientific inquiry and watch the destruction of everything they’ve built together?
AC: What drew you to the theater?
ML: My mother was born and raised in Kerala, India, and my father was born and raised in Germany. My mother received a scholarship to the University of Frankfurt for her graduate studies and met my father there. Eventually, they moved to the States and I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We lived across the street from a Synagogue.
When I was around five, the Synagogue moved out and a community theater moved in. The first show they did at this community theater was The Man of La Mancha. And the gentleman playing Don Quixote knocked on our door and asked if we possibly had any lemons as he needed them for his voice and he invited us to the show. My parents took us (me and my siblings) to the show. I did not understand everything that was happening. But what I do remember was the sensation of feeling like I was inside of the music… inside of the story. And I’ve been at the theater, in some way or another, since then.
AC: Having lived through this journey, in your opinion, what are the challenges for someone wanting to take up theatre as a profession?
ML: There are many challenges. I’ll name two. First, a career in the arts is not a straight line. What I mean by that is that in most careers if you are good at what you do you advance forward. In the arts, you can have an extraordinary year with many jobs you love, and the next year you can be unemployed. You have to be OK with the mercurial nature of a freelance life. And second, part of making good art is having the courage to go beyond where you might be comfortable. That is how the best art is made. You have to be able to live in that search.
AC: Could you share experiences of working with the lead cast of Queen – Kjerstine Anderson and Uma Paranjpe?
ML: I loved working with Kjerstine and Uma! They are not only extraordinary actors, but wonderful humans. I’ve stood side by side with them on stage as an actor. So I came into this process already knowing both of them. They are both incredibly intelligent and generous performers. So it was truly a joy to work with them.
AC: Tell us a little bit about your experience of working with Madhuri Shekar on Queen. Could you share some vignettes on this creative experience with her?
ML: I met Madhuri in 2014 when she came to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where I was working at the time) to work on this play. Since then, our paths have crossed indirectly many times and I’m always curious to read or witness her work. She wasn’t in the room with us for this process, but she allowed a few changes to the script to make sure all the local references were accurate.
I also had a conversation with her about what inspired this play. She said she wanted to write a play about scientists. When she began writing this play, she was working on her MFA in playwriting, and she was living with a student getting her PhD in organic chemistry. She was fascinated by the scientific community and its parallels to the theater world. She said that she observed that science, like the arts, is chronically undervalued.
Scientists keep odd hours and work at all times of the day and night. Their friend groups are usually formed with those they work with and are a very tight-knit group. They are very passionate about their work; they care deeply about what they do and spend a lot of their down time discussing it with their friends. Fundamentally undervalued and endlessly passionate. I laughed in recognition at the similarities.
I asked her why bees, and she said she actually tried writing about a different subject, but it wasn’t going anywhere and her scientist friends told her to write about bees, because “everybody loves bees.”
She went on to say that she had given herself a sort of prompt. One of her dearest friends is a fellow playwright and she wondered what would be the worst thing that could happen to this friendship and she answered, the worst thing would be if my friend said to me, you are not a writer.
Madhuri took this community and this idea and spun it into this beautiful play.