Truth Values is a solo show that had its origins as a writing exercise. I never imagined it to be educational, but shortly after premiering it at the New York International Fringe Festival, I found audiences saw in it a valuable and fresh way to address diversity and inclusion in STEM. I became enamored of the idea of use of my work for that good purpose, and eventually won a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to create an educational framework for the play, which we rolled out at Columbia University in 2018. Because of this, in early 2020 we had our best touring year booked ever.

Of course in March of 2020, thanks to Covid, everything evaporated. My disappointment was overwhelming. I remember one afternoon bursting into tears talking online with one of the wonderful people at the Entertainment Community Fund—formerly the “Actors Fund”—an extraordinary organization that stepped up vividly for those of us in arts and entertainment during the pandemic, when so many of us lost so much work.

In 2021, I was approached with an opportunity to tour the show in Canada. Touring like putting together multiple weddings in multiple cities at once. It’s a lot of work, and I’d had a break long enough to gain perspective on that, so I was reticent. I also wondered, would my words still be relevant after the turmoil we’ve all been through these last couple of years? We are having such an upheaval with women’s rights in general; did anyone care anymore about women in STEM? Was there an update for 2022 I could write that might illuminate this? Could we tour this very American play to another country besides the United States and have it translate? And could we go to a bunch of different cities during a pandemic and not have people get sick?

The tour had been sparked by an inquiry from a really interesting and delightful recent University of Ottawa mathematics Ph.D. graduate, Maiko Serizawa. I found a kindred spirit in Maiko; she had a mathematical background and had morphed her work—and life—into art. She hosts a podcast and has published a novel.

When she approached me about touring to Ottawa, I was captivated by her energy and perspective as much as by the idea of touring to Ottawa. We worked on tour preparations for many months, becoming friends in the process. I got to know her friends and colleagues, becoming part of Maiko’s community. I became eager to tour in spite of my fears. Independently, I was approached by others in Canada, and so a multi-city adventure was born.

Just before the tour began, I was quite stressed about what could go wrong with a project with so many moving parts. I was worried about how out of shape I’d become during the pandemic. I was worried about getting sick. I was worried that the creative and production side of the tour wouldn’t be ready in time, and even more, that the show would be out of date. I got up early to meditate away my stress every morning. I was one of the very first in line to get the new bivalent booster vaccine shot. Then we did a creative update for 2022.

It all came together a day before the tour began.