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The Half-Life of Marie Curie

By: Lauren Gunderson
Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew, Francesca Faridany
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Publisher's summary

In 1912, scientist Marie Curie spent two months on the British seaside at the home of Hertha Ayrton, an accomplished mathematician, inventor, and suffragette. At the time, Curie was in the throes of a scandal in France over her affair with Paul Langevin, which threatened to overshadow the accomplishment of her second Nobel Prize.

Performed by Kate Mulgrew and Francesca Faridany at the Minetta Lane Theatre, this play by Lauren Gunderson is an ode to two remarkable women who, despite tremendous personal and professional obstacles, continued to devote their lives to scientific innovation and social change.

Playwright Lauren Gunderson was awarded a commission through the Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund, an initiative dedicated to developing innovative original plays driven by language and voice. As an Audible commissioned playwright, she received funding and creative support to develop The Half Life of Marie Curie.

Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch
Sound design by Darron L. West

©2019 Lauren Gunderson (P)2019 AO Media LLC
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Go Behind the Scenes of The Half-Life of Marie Curie

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Our favorite moments from The Half-Life of Marie Curie

"We do things for people we love that make very little sense."
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"I might have finally stopped feeling, actually."
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"And yet here you are with more work to do, more to explore."
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  • The Half-Life of Marie Curie
  • "We do things for people we love that make very little sense."
  • The Half-Life of Marie Curie
  • "I might have finally stopped feeling, actually."
  • The Half-Life of Marie Curie
  • "And yet here you are with more work to do, more to explore."

About the Creator

Lauren has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Residency with Marin Theatre Company. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School, where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. She co-authored the play Miss Bennet with Margot Melcon. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You; Exit, Pursued by a Bear; The Taming; and Toil And Trouble), Dramatists Play Service (The Revolutionists; The Book of Will; Silent Sky; Bauer; Natural Shocks; The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley; and Miss Bennet), and Samuel French (Emilie). Her picture book Dr. Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon is available from Two Lions/Amazon.

About the Director

Gaye Taylor Upchurch has directed the world premieres and Off-Broadway productions of Anna Ziegler’s The Last Match (Roundabout and The Old Globe), Animal (with Rebecca Hall at Atlantic Theater; Studio Theatre; Helen Hayes nomination for best direction), and Bethany with America Ferrera (Women’s Project Theater and The Old Globe). Her other Off-Broadway credits include Simon Stephens’s Harper Regan and Bluebird with Simon Russell Beale (Atlantic Theater Company), Nancy Harris’s Our New Girl (Atlantic), and Lucy Thurber’s Stay (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater). Selected regional credits include Member of the Wedding (Williamstown), The Year of Magical Thinking with Kathleen Turner (Arena Stage), An Iliad (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and West Point), and As You Like It (Hudson Valley and Folger Theater in Washington, DC; Falstaff Award for Best Production and nomination for Best Director).

About the Performer

Kate Mulgrew stars as Galina "Red" Reznikov, the tough Russian prison chef who is always keeping score, in the series Orange Is the New Black. She received a Critics Choice Television Award and a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her work. Mulgrew is internationally recognized as Captain Janeway, the first leading-role female captain in the Star Trek TV franchise in Star Trek: Voyager. Her career spans film, television, and the stage. Classically trained, she received a Golden Globe nomination at the age of 23 for her portrayal of Mrs. Columbo, the wife of the famous TV detective. Other notable television appearances include Kate Loves a Mystery, Cheers, Murphy Brown, St. Elsewhere, Ryan’s Hope, The Black Donnellys, Mercy, Warehouse 13, NTSF:SD:SUV::, and Mr. Mercedes. Film roles include Throw Momma from the Train, Star Trek: Nemesis, A Stranger Is Watching, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, and The Response. Mulgrew has toured throughout the United States as Katharine Hepburn in Tea at Five, for which she was nominated for Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel awards. Other theater credits include Equus, The American Dream, The Sandbox, Iphigenia 2.0 (for which she won an Obie), Our Leading Lady, Black Comedy, Titus Andronicus, and Somewhere Fun, all in New York. She performed in The Exonerated in London and regionally in The Royal Family, The Film Society, What the Butler Saw, Hedda Gabler, Measure for Measure, The Real Thing, Another Part of the Forest, Major Barbara, and Antony and Cleopatra. Her first book, Born with Teeth, a memoir about life lived to the fullest, made The New York Times best seller list. Her second book, How to Forget: A Daughter’s Memoir, was released in 2019. She resides in New York City.

About the Performer

Francesca Faridany is an accomplished stage and screen actress. Broadway: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; Macbeth; Man and Boy; The 39 Steps; and The Homecoming. Off-Broadway: This Day Forward; The NY Idea; Orlando; and The Stronger. Regional highlights: Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Carmel Bach Festival); 2013 Helen Hayes Best Actress Award for Strange Interlude (Shakespeare Theatre, DC); Julia in Albee’s A Delicate Balance (McCarter); title role in her own adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else (Sundance Theater Lab, Berkeley Rep.; La Jolla; Long Wharf; McCarter Theaters); Narrator in the Sitwell/Walton Façade (Caramoor Music Festival); Cassandra in Agamemnon opposite Tyne Daly (Getty Villa); As You Like It (Shakespeare Theatre); and the many productions with director Stephen Wadsworth, including: As You Like It; The Oresteia; Don Juan; Design for Living; An Ideal Husband; Changes of Heart; and The Game of Love and Chance. Film: False Positive (2020); Black Panther; Love After Love; The Audition; Closing Night; and Conceiving Ada. Media: Lady Macbeth and Titania for the Wordplay Shakespeare series. Radio: Quartermaine’s Terms (BBC). TV: The Hunt; Bull; Manifest; FBI; Homeland; Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders; Falling Water; Law & Order: SVU; E.R.; and Deadline. Francesca trained in London at The Drama Centre.

What listeners say about The Half-Life of Marie Curie

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the best 79 min so far

It is THE BEST audible original so far, amazing and inspiring story of how strong women are.

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17 people found this helpful

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Great work!!

A very light and humorous story. Amazing performances!
I thought it would be boring, but I was wrong, and I am happy to be wrong. I truly loved it.

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2 people found this helpful

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Interesting but Ultimately Disappointing

A story about friendship wasn't what I was expecting. Madame Curie was portrayed as a far weaker woman than she probably was in reality. The story would have been more interesting if they had started from the formation of their friendship. The best part of the book was the descriptions of the work both women contributed to the First World War.

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2 people found this helpful

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Amazing to listen to theatre on Audible

This is a not to be missed play. It related so wonderfully to my just-completed read of Melinda Gates new book regarding women and Lift.

Bravo to Audible for its Originals. I look forward to more plays.

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Touching Piece

Absolutely adored this beautifully voice acted tale of a friendship about two Amazing women defying odds and making herstory.

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Loved it

So regret not knowing I could have seen this in NYC last year. Great story. I had no idea.

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Pleasant Surprise! It Was Great!

This was a free audible original. So was "A Mind of Her Own," which I liked but which was not remotely as good! I loved that Kate Mulgrew plays Marie Curie's good friend Hertha Ayrton. I'd never heard of Hertha but school students SHOULD learn about her! It's a story like "Hidden Figures" where women are doing the work and never get the credit. Hertha is a fluid flow dynamics mathematician and engineer. She invented a way to eliminate the hissing from arc electric street lights. She was the first woman elected to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Because of her sex, she was not allowed to read her own paper about electric arcs to the Royal Society. No wonder she was a Suffragette!

Apparently after the death of Marie's Curie's husband Pierre, she had a long affair with Paul Langevin. He was Pierre's former student, five years younger than Marie and married, but separated. The French consensus seemed to be affairs are fine only if MEN have them. Marie was demonized over the scandal, afraid even to leave her house. Hertha talks her into leaving Paris. (While away, Marie learns Paul's wife is pregnant and he is back with her.)

Hertha wishes Marie could win another Nobel Prize to give people something else to think and talk about besides the scandal.... Well, Marie did win a second prize! Marie Curie is one of only two Nobel laureates who won the prize in TWO DIFFERENT FIELDS: She and her husband won in Physics; she won in Chemistry for discovering two new elements: radium and polonium (which she named after Poland, her country of origin). She won but the Nobel committee told her not to come to get it because of the scandal! (Einstein disagreed with this.) Hertha says she should go!

Hertha tells Marie not to let men stop her. If they say she cannot go to work in her lab, she should go anyway. If they say stop, she should moving forward. Hertha is like a force of nature, perfectly portrayed by Kate Mulgrew/Captain Janeway!

When France fought Germany in WWI, both women made big contributions to the French war effort. Marie first offetrf to give France her two Nobel prizes to melt them down for the gold, but the government turned down her offer. She found another way to help: Perceiving a need she designed portable x-ray units (that soldiers called "little Curies") for the front. According to the audio, she herself drove an ambulance with her equipment to the front lines. She assuredly organized the mobile units and radiology service..

The Germans gassed Allied soldiers in the trenches during WWI -- my Grandfather was one of those soldiers. Hertha, used her fluid-flow dynamics expertise, to create the Ayrton fan, a device to clear poison and mustard gas from the trenches in seconds, and she organized the production of these fans. In the audio she says that even the Americans wanted them.

I read that neither woman was recognized for her contributions to France's war efforts. Typical. Hidden figures.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Well performed!

A wonderful play and a great work. I loved every second of it. It even calmed me down. Well done Audible, well done Lauren.

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Terrific novella & spectacular performance

The novella itself was short but powerful. I find myself wanting a bit more, eager to research both women and their accomplishments.
The performance was terrific...I love Kate Mulgrews voice.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Dramatic, with great sound effects

A little dramatic for me, I wasn't sure what this would be like. But it was done well and was really interesting!

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