by Tira Palmquist
- Performance Date: April 22, 2015
- Two Degrees received its world premiere Feb 3 - Mar 12, 2017 at the Denver Performing Arts Center, dir. Christy Montour-Larson.
A climate scientist is coming to Washington. Things are beginning to heat up.
Emma Phelps is a paleoclimatologist, focusing on ice in Greenland. In drilling and studying ice core samples, she sees first hand the symptoms of our changing planet. In addition to her growing sense of urgency for the planet, Emma is a recent widow. Now she's been asked to come to Washington D.C. to testify in a Senate Committee regarding climate change legislation, and in this intersection of science and politics, of politics and the personal, she finds more than just a little is breaking up under the strain of change.
The plays of Tira Palmquist include Two Degrees, Ten Mile Lake, Age of Bees, And Then They Fell, and many others. Two Degrees, her newest play, was recently read at the 2015 Athena Project Festival in Denver. Tira teaches writing at UC Irvine and at the Orange County School of the Arts.
Director Joshua Wolf Coleman is known for his acting roles in the films Multiple, Mr. President, and Hidalgo and such TV shows as How To Get Away with Murder, Castle, Scandal, Parenthood, and Grey’s Anatomy. Josh performed the role of Clay in a reading of Two Degrees at The Road Theater.
Science mentor Jennifer Walker is an Environmental Science PhD student in the Simona Bordoni Research Group at Caltech. Her research focuses on the atmosphere and on the tropical monsoons which affect the water resources, agricultural productivity, and economic vitality of more than half the world’s population. Jennifer is also co-founder of Science & Engineering Policy at Caltech (SEPAC), a student organization which explores the roles of scientists and engineers in policy development.