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From Eugenics To The "New" Genetics: "The Play's The Thing", Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Genetics occupies a place in the public imagination with which few areas of science can compete. It is popularly understood to be the “science of life,” concerned with the essence of humanity: a subject that generates both awe and fear. These divergent emotions are encapsulated in the “promise versus peril” debate: the promise of an end to human disease is countered by the peril embodied in the discriminatory capacity of genetic essentialism. This debate has become ingrained in popular culture, and its dramatic potential has been effectively realized in theatre.

Plays have always been written and performed as expressions of …