A new play about a reclusive group of scientists whose radical discoveries challenge widely held assumptions about the world. Operating beyond the reach of traditional institutions, they convene a small circle of private investors each year on a remote Pacific atoll, pitching their latest inventions to secure the funding that keeps their isolated laboratory alive.
The play unfolds across two interwoven timelines. In the present, the audience witnesses a sequence of high-stakes lectures, as each scientist unveils work that promises to reshape reality itself. Between these presentations, the story flashes back to the week before the summit, marked by the recent death of one of the the Naturalists and escalating financial strain that threatens their fragile order.
As the scientists prepare to face their investors, they must also contend with grief, suspicion, and the consequences of their own innovations. What begins as a fundraising event slowly pushes their collective to the breaking point and raises urgent questions about knowledge, power, and the cost of progress.
Jon Bernson is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning media artist whose interdisciplinary work spans film, theater, audio-visual art, and music. His shape-shifting projects push the boundaries of narrative storytelling, often exploring existential themes with a slow-burn, tragicomic style. He has held residencies at the de Young Museum, Playwrights Foundation, The Space Program, and with The Imaginists.Bernson is the author of seven plays, including When Lighting the Voids, written for StoryWorks Theater and later adapted into a nationally broadcast radio play on Reveal. He has been supported by the Rainin Foundation, Culture Keepers and the Venturous Theater Fund, with work presented at Minnesota Street Project, Catharine Clark Gallery, Stanford University, Sonos Studio, and at festivals and venues internationally.As a musician, Bernson has released more than twenty albums, including music featured in David Fincher’s The Social Network. He also composed, scored, and sound designed The New Yorker’s Reeducated, which earned him both an Emmy and a Peabody Award. His installation Beautification Machine, created with Andy Diaz Hope, was acquired by the Nevada Museum of Art for its permanent collection.
