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People build friendships on all kinds of common ground, but in the play “Queen,” two colleagues’ solid friendship based on years of shared research may be rocked by new data.
The drama, written by San Jose-born playwright Madhuri Shekar, opens this week at TheatreWorks. “Queen” tells of Sanam and Ariel, two female scientists whose study aims to pinpoint the reason for honeybee populations dying off. Their science seems sound, but input from someone outside the research realm sheds new light on their work.
Actor and director Miriam Laube is directing the show. Laube came to helm the production partly by way of a 17-year tenure with Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where she worked with former TheatreWorks Artistic Director Tim Bond and also met Shekar.
This production is presented in collaboration with EnActe Arts, a South Bay-based theater company.
“TheatreWorks is excited to produce Madhuri Shekar’s ‘Queen’ in collaboration with EnActe Arts, a Silicon Valley theater company dedicated to uplifting South Asian and diaspora voices,” TheatreWorks Artistic Director Giovanna Sardelli said. “In addition to cross-promotions between our audiences, we are teaming up to host community discussions about ‘Queen‘, including a post-show discussion with EnActe Arts Founder/Artistic Director Vinita Sud Belani and local scientists following the Wednesday, March 20 performance.”
Ahead of Queen’s opening, we chatted with Laube, who talked about what the arts and science have in common, what she learned about bees and more.
This conversation has been edited for length.
The Almanac: Tell us a little about yourself.
Miriam Laube: My mother was born and raised in Kerala, India, and my father was born and raised in different parts of Germany. I am a first-generation American. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, my parents both immigrated to this country. I have been a theater artist for as long as I can remember, I didn’t originally think I would pursue it, but eventually I did and it’s been my passion and my job for these last 25 years.
The Almanac: You live in New York City now after 17 years with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (in Ashland, Oregon). What was making that move like?
Miriam Laube: We had lived there before we went to Ashland for the first time. It’s different to live in New York City when you’re in your 20s than in your 50s and I think there is nothing like New York: the sort of energy and excitement and things move at a pace. … It’s harder to be grounded and in touch with the world around you and I mean that both sort of physically and spiritually. But it is an extraordinary city. There’s nothing like it.
The Almanac: How did you come to direct “Queen?”
Miriam Laube: I worked with Tim Bond at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, when he first got there in the late ’90s and then again in the mid-2000s. He saw a production I directed at Santa Cruz Shakespeare. He knew me as an actor, but then he saw my work as a director and consequently asked me to do this.
I actually know Madhuri Shekar. I’ve done a play of hers as an actor. I met her for the first time when she came up to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She was working on “Queen” and when I talked to her about this play, she said it was inspired by her roommate who was getting her PhD (I believe it was in organic chemistry). What she realized is that the scientific community has an awful lot in common with the arts community — both undervalued and overworked and very, very passionate about what they do. It’s not a normal 9-to-5 for either profession and their friends groups, both in the arts and the sciences, generally are the people that they are working with, which is a little bit unusual to be such good close friends as well as colleagues.
She also had a friend who was getting her MFA with her that she considered a dear friend, like almost sisters, right? She asked herself the question as a sort of a writing prompt: what would be the worst thing that could happen to our friendship? She thought it would be that if her friend said to her, “you are not a writer.” This play was inspired by Madhuri’s interest in the scientific community and in friendship — what happens to people who live and work together when they challenge each other’s personal and professional integrity?
The Almanac: A research study about Colony Collapse Disorder kicks off the drama in the play. How do you approach directing a show that’s about this complex scientific topic?
Miriam Laube: You do some research and you talk to people. We had a field trip to a beekeeper and we saw his hive. We put on the suits and we looked at the hive and explained to us how we could look to find the queen. So basically, you know, we sought out information. We’re also doing this in collaboration with EnActe Arts … led by Vinita Sud Belani. Before she became a theater producer, she was in the tech world and she could explain the science to us.
There’s two kinds of science (in the play): one is called Colony Collapse Disorder and all of that entails and the other is statistics, probabilities, because they’re measuring the effect of pesticides on bee populations. So, in order to understand this information, we sought out people who could explain it to us. It’s exciting — and I’m not saying that I understand stochastic variations, but Madhuri, in her great playwriting wisdom, will bring these things up, and then she’ll find the layman’s way to explain these terms (like) confirmation bias and threshold effects.
The Almanac: What would you say were the most challenging aspects of directing “Queen?”
Miriam Laube: I think I would answer that in two ways. One is making sure that we really did understand the science that we were talking about, and that just takes some extra research and finding the people who can talk to you. The other is having two-and-a-half weeks to put up a play. So I would say the science and the schedule. The schedule is not unusual these days in making theater — it’s just that after the pandemic, schedules have shortened, so I think the extra research is probably the most difficult part.
The Almanac: What was the most fun aspect of directing the show?
First of all, I think it’s a lovely play to investigate female friendship. It’s (about) what happens to these friends when they stand on opposite sides of the question, does the end justify the means … you’ll see what happens to the friendship as they stand and have to work through this question, as they’re challenging each other’s personal integrity and professional integrity and they have to to work their way through that.
Our field trip to the bees happened to be on a super sunny day. It was just so beautiful watching this bee community work together. And I feel the same way about our cast. … It’s only four people (Uma Paranjpe, Kjerstine Anderson, Deven Kolluri and Mike Ryan), but they’re an incredible group of actors and they, I think, have come to love and respect each other. And so to be in the room with these four beautiful spirits really has been a joy. And I will also say, TheatreWorks is a great theater (company).
The design is really kind of delicious — the scenic design by Nina Ball, lights by Kent Dorsey, sound by James Ard and Lisa Claybaugh doing costumes.
The Almanac: What did you learn about bees that surprised you while working on this production?
Miriam Laube: I had no idea of how much of our food source came from bee pollination — that bees in fact are a bellwether for human civilization. Colony Collapse Disorder is a huge issue because if the bees are disappearing, that does not bode well for us. … Learning about how our food is connected to the bees was fascinating.
Western honeybees are such a community organism — they work together to survive. I have never had the chance before to see a beehive in full activity. I think I might have seen pictures. But when you’re actually standing in front of one of them, and you get to pull up one of the honeycombs … they’re in complete motion and they’re so alive and they communicate with each other.
When I first talked to our scenic designer Nina Ball, I said to her, ‘when we finally get to the beehive in the last scene of our play, it’s like the difference between being and becoming.’ It’s not a static thing: becoming is a continual process of rebirth, right? Things die and then reemerge in a new way. …I think it was an interesting thing to stand in front of the beehive. You can just feel it. And finally the sound of a beehive – the sound of a group of bees talking to each other is extraordinary. It’s a beautiful sound.
“Queen” runs through March 31 at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Tickets are $27-$100, theatreworks.org.