In theater as well as animal behavior, conflict reveals truths; I study behavior as a scientist and as a playwright. From 2005-2011, I studied playwriting, via reading and workshops. In 2011, I pivoted back to my Berkeley lab and new ideas about spatial navigation to odors. In 2023, I will be moving to the Hudson Valley and pivoting back to theater and wildlife film. In 2007, my first completed plays reached national semi-finals (NIGHT LAB , 2007 O’Neill Playwright’s Conference; CONVERSATIONS, a proposal written with David Ford for the Alfred P. Sloan/Magic Theatre Writing Commission 2007; CAGES, short-listed for the Bay Area Playwrights Shorts Festival, 2007). In 2010, I won a position in the Writer’s Pool of Playground, Inc., the competitive Bay Area company for emerging playwrights, with monthly staged readings at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. I was a member of the company for Seasons 17 and 18 (2010-12). The topics of my plays included genetics and individual differences (FIVE BEAR POKER, People’s Choice Award Winner, October 2010), a vaudevillian’s tour of the central nervous system (ROUNDS, March 2011) and the story of Clever Hans; HEARTBREAK HORSE, November 2011). My treatments for narrative film screenplays on scientific themes were short-listed for the Alfred P. Sloan/Sundance Commissioning Grant and Fellowship competition: CONVERSATIONS IN THE ARK DURING HEAVY RAIN, 2010; and in 2014, LOVE IN THE TREETOPS). In 2003, I was an Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts (Marin Country, Calif.) with the visual artist Gail Wight (Department of Art, Stanford University), where we mounted a production of Verdi’s “La Traviata”, performed by live crickets.