The first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the discoverer of radium and polonium, Marie Curie is one of scientific history’s pioneers.
Yet as playwright Lauren Gunderson’s “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” illuminates, the woman born Maria Salomea Sklodowska in Warsaw in 1867 who became a groundbreaking researcher, very much lived a full life.
For her honeymoon with fellow scientist Pierre Curie, for example, she bicycled around the French countryside. She had two daughters. She was the first woman to ever teach at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Gunderson’s 2019 play, making its San Diego premiere at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad, takes place a year after Curie won the Nobel in 1911, six years after her husband’s death, and in the crosshairs of gossip over an alleged affair. It finds her at the British seaside home of her close friend Hertha Ayrton, herself a scientist and also a suffragette.
Rachael VanWormer is portraying Curie in this NVA production opposite Leigh Scarritt playing Ayrton. Jonni Garro is understudying both roles as a swing.
Besides being a woman who VanWormer called “underrepresented in her field at the time, she’s often held up as this figure, almost more of a symbol than a person. What this play does so beautifully in rough ways and sometimes gentle ways, and in all of the delicious complexity of being human, is we see her succeed, we see her fail, we see her thrash around, we see her overcome.”
“We see all the human elements behind the symbol she’s become. She literally changed the course of human history, but this is a reminder that everybody is fallible and deserves to be given credit for that as well as for their achievements.”
Besides focusing on Marie Curie the woman, Gunderson’s play shows how relevant her struggles are to today’s women, said Kym Pappas, who is directing “Half-Life” in Carlsbad.
“These women (Curie and Ayrton) are up against the same thing that we’re fighting now,” Pappas said. “They’re fighting for autonomy and the right to be who they are and to do what they love, and to be all the things that women are. Mostly, they’re fighting to do their work unencumbered by the expectations that society puts on them.
“This feels very present right now. Unfortunately.”
VanWormer drew on a biography of Curie, written by Marie’s daughter Eve, in her research for the role. She gained insight into the friendship between her mother and Ayrton.
“I am excited by the fact that this was a friendship not based exclusively on agreement,” VanWormer said. “They take each other to task and hold each other accountable. That’s a more interesting and complicated human relationship than being just best buddies no matter what.”
Pappas said there’s “a reality to (Gunderson’s play) but also a dreamlike quality. A surrealism at some points. It’s interesting to me how that aligns with some of the themes of the play, like science versus nature.”
“(But) the heart of the play lives in the relationship between these two women,” Pappas said. “Ultimately, it’s about female friendship and how we get each other through.”
‘The Half-Life of Marie Curie’
When: Previews today through Jan. 31. Opens Feb. 1 and runs through Feb. 23. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays
Where: Conrad Prebys Theatre at the Dea Hurston New Village Arts Center, 2787 State St., Carlsbad
Tickets: $35-$60
Phone: 760-433-3245
Online: newvillagearts.org
