Set entirely in a cornfield, In McClintock’s Corn is a play about gender-non-conforming, neurodivergent geneticist Barbara McClintock and her companion/partner Harriet Creighton. It tells the story of McClintock’s revolutionary quest to understand diversity in nature and to reframe “deviance” as an expression of natural variance.

RATED PG: LGBTQIA themes

Born in 1902, Barbara McClintock pursued genetics research on maize (corn) genetics at the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, NY. She researched the suppression and expression of certain genetic traits from one generation to another and developed theories that linked particular genes to physical characteristics. Despite resistance from her male colleagues, she persisted with her research, garnering multiple awards. In 1983, she became the first woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Barbara passed at age 90 in 1992.*

Credit: americanhistory.si.edu