{"id":343,"date":"2026-06-13T04:10:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T04:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cambridgemovinghub.com\/?p=343"},"modified":"2026-06-13T04:10:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T04:10:40","slug":"immersive-play-at-city-hall-revives-1976-recombination-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cambridgemovinghub.com\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Immersive play at City Hall revives 1976 recombination debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Coming to a city hall near us: the theater of today\u2019s politics is pausing for the theater of the past. The new play \u201cNo Recombination Without Representation\u201d will bring to life the 1976 public hearing that debated the safety of DNA recombination research at Harvard University. Throughout June, six performances will take place in Sullivan Chamber, where the original hearing occurred 50 years ago, and where Cambridge City Council still gathers for business.<\/p>\n

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A collaboration between MIT Museum and Central Square Theater, the production promises an \u201cimmersive\u201d experience that takes audiences back to the 1970s \u2014 a time when trust in institutions was at a historic low.<\/p>\n

Playwright Patrick Gabridge says he has always been drawn to stories of social struggle, and is particularly interested in the history of science.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cScience has always been a part of my blood,\u201d says Gabridge, who attended MIT in the 80s and whose father was a microbiologist. \u201cI kind of grew up in a biology lab.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Gabridge had never heard of the 1976 recombination debates, which pitted fearful Cambridge residents and wary older scientists against younger researchers enthusiastic about the prospects of blending DNA from different sources.<\/p>\n

As Gabridge read transcripts of the hearings and reviewed materials from historians, he felt a responsibility to get the history right, but he also needed to make it digestible as a play.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do I take this five-hour meeting and turn it into a one-hour play that makes sense?\u201d he wondered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the end, nearly every line in the play is a line from the hearing transcript. While the hearing posed many questions, the play is driving at one: \u201cWho should make the decision about scientific research that has the potential to harm the people around it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Making this question feel real and urgent to the audience is part of the work of the play\u2019s director, Debra Wise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard for us to grasp how surprising it was for a group of laypeople to challenge the ongoing work of the scientific community,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

To highlight this, the production will take place in Cambridge City Hall.<\/p>\n

Gabridge specializes in site-specific productions \u2014 plays performed outside a traditional theater and in a location that is important to the story. He\u2019s launched productions at Boston\u2019s Old State House and Old South Meeting House, as well as Cambridge\u2019s Mount Auburn Cemetery. Gabridge says he finds these locations useful for \u201cfleshing out\u201d stories from the 18th and 19th century that have otherwise been \u201cmythologized or flattened.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This time, looking back only 50 years felt fresh. When the production team visited Sullivan Chamber, its high ceilings, dark wood paneling, and historic portraiture lent itself well to the project. It both helps and hurts that the space hasn\u2019t changed much since the 70s.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere was no air conditioning back then,\u201d says Wise. She notes that the first night of the hearing happened on one of the hottest nights of the year and audiences may experience some of the same New England mugginess that residents endured back then.<\/p>\n

Sullivan Chamber is a public space and she says performing a play there is part of that. But rehearsing site-specific productions is not straightforward. Although public commenters sometimes disagree, City Hall is still a functioning workplace. And actors will only have two rehearsals in the space before they have a full audience.<\/p>\n

Wise says current city officials have been welcoming and helped advise the team on the customs of the council. For instance, she asked if councillors would have discussed how they felt about recombinant DNA with their colleagues beforehand. Wise said Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui told her no, hopefully not. The point of a hearing is to have all matters of discussion be available to the public and discussing opinions or preparing for a vote ahead of time would have been inappropriate, if not unlawful under Massachusetts\u2019 open meeting law.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the councillors who played a role in this historic debate, Wise says channeling them has been \u201cmoving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them have passed and they were so big, in spirit and personality,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Councillor Saundra Graham, for example, died in 2023. It wasn\u2019t until working on this production that Wise learned more about Graham\u2019s life as an activist. She, along with other local housing activists, stormed the stage at Harvard\u2019s commencement ceremony in 1970, demanding that the university build affordable housing in Riverside where it was planning to build a dorm.<\/p>\n

And there was Mayor Al Vellucci, who died in 2002, and was the most visible and vocal figure of the recombination debates. He famously called for Harvard Yard to be paved into a parking lot and for the Harvard Lampoon office turned into a public urinal. He was anti-recombination, too. But, Wise learned that when Vellucci was young, his father died from inhaling toxins at his factory job. Vellucci left school after that and although he never earned a formal education, he ultimately became mayor.<\/p>\n

This was a time when more public servants were \u201ctownies\u201d \u2014 antagonists of the elite institutions nearby, rather than graduates of them. That dynamic is on display in the play\u2019s dialogue.<\/p>\n

Learning these personal details weren\u2019t just helpful for actors getting into character, Wise says. They were \u201cmoments of discovery\u201d for the team, especially those who live in Cambridge.<\/p>\n

At the end of the play\u2019s first act, the public will be invited to participate in the discussion \u2014 a nod to the role of citizens in the original debate. Audience members will be given short biographies of people who lived in Cambridge at the time, and invited to act as them for a discussion on if recombinant DNA research should happen locally.<\/p>\n

The civic process, Gabridge says, is \u201cnot always beautiful.\u201d In fact, sometimes it\u2019s \u201dgoofy or boring.\u201d But, in this play and in life, \u201cthere is a way for the public to get involved in making decisions that affect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more MIT Professor takes on Congress<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming to a city hall near us: the theater of today\u2019s politics is pausing for the theater of the past. The new play \u201cNo Recombination Without Representation\u201d will bring to life the 1976 public hearing that debated the safety of DNA recombination research at Harvard University. 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