Craig Baxter’s The Altruists Wins STAGE Award

Craig Baxter’s play, The Altruists, is the winner of Stage International’s 4th annual STAGE Award for new plays about science and technology. The award comes with a $10,000 cash prize and an opportunity to further develop the play.

Based on a true story, the play is set in London in the 1960s, and concerns George Price, Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith — scientists whose fundamental work in evolutionary biology nearly fifty years ago resonates deeply with current investigations into fields ranging from social networking to cell behavior and beyond.

Four other plays were also chosen as finalists in the 2010 competition: Gyroball, by Tim Bauer; Leg Man, by David Caudle; Instructions to Any Future Socialist Government Wishing to Abolish Christmas, by Michael Mackenzie; and The Other Place, by Sharr White.

Judges for the 2010 competition included award-winning playwrights David Auburn, John Guare, and David Lindsay-Abaire, as well as Nobel Laureate scientists Dr. Alan Heeger and Sir Anthony Leggett.

Baxter, who lives in the U.K., divides his professional time between playwriting and scientific publishing (currently for the International Glaciological Society). His other plays include Let Newton Be, Re: Design, Like Confessing a Murder, Hard Sell, The Ministry of Pleasure, Monogamy, The Animals, Big Bang, Relics, Spearcarriers, Taking Liberties, St James and the Tattoo Man, and The Thrill of the Chaste.

For more information, visit www.stage.cnsi.ucsb.edu.