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An Immaculate Misconception

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An Immaculate Misconception

By: Carl Djerassi
Narrated by: Jobeth Williams, Kevin Kilner, Kendall Schmidt, Philip Casnoff
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About this listen

Dr. Melanie Laidlaw is a scientist developing the first use of ICSI, short for intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Her collaborator, Dr. Felix Frankenthaler, turns out to have his own ideas about how to implement their new procedure. The wild card is Melanie’s new lover, Menachem Dvir, a fellow scientist. This darkly comic menage-a-tois plays out not only in bedrooms and labs, but also in test tubes and under the microscope. A Brave New World indeed!

Includes an interview with Liza Mundy, a staff writer at the Washington Post and the author of "Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Men, Women, and the World".

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:

Philip Casnoff as Menachem Dvir

Kevin Kilner as Dr. Felix Frankenthaler

Kendall Schmidt as Adam

Jobeth Williams as Dr. Melanie Laidlaw

Directed by Jenny Sullivan. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles.

An Immaculate Misconception is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

©2000 Carl Djerassi (P)2004 L.A. Theatre Works
Biological Sciences Biotechnology Drama & Plays Entertainment & Performing Arts Medicine & Health Care Industry Science United States World Literature

Editor reviews

Jobeth Williams and Kevin Kilner lead a dynamic cast in this dramatization of An Immaculate Misconception, which explores the moral issues behind sexual intercourse and reproduction. Williams portrays Dr. Melanie Laidlaw, a biologist working on intracytoplasmic sperm injection - a procedure in which injecting a single sperm into a single egg can lead to fertilization - as passionate about her work to the point of being willfully blind to the ethical implications of her methods. Kilner voices Dr. Laidlaw’s collaborator Dr. Felix Krankenthaler as a man whose ambition and self-interest leads him to own ethical lapses. Along with the rest of the cast, their witty performances make it easy for listeners to grasp the science behind the drama.

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