«An Immaculate Misconception» by Carl Djerassi

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. Carl Djerassi's darkly comic ménage-à-trois plays out not only in bedrooms and labs, but also in test tubes and under the microscope.

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

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.

Directed by Jenny Sullivan. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in January of 2004.

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.