Photograph 51

About the show

Photograph 51 is a play by Anna Ziegler. Photograph 51 opened in the West End of London in September 2015. The play focuses on the often-overlooked role of X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA while working at King's College London. This play won the third STAGE International Script Competition in 2008. The title comes from Photo 51, the nickname given to an X-ray diffraction image taken by Raymond Gosling in May, 1952, under the supervision of Rosalind Franklin. The one-act play runs for 95 minutes with no intermission. Photograph 51 was commissioned, developed, and given its world premiere under the direction of Mary Resing by Active Cultures Theatre in Maryland in 2008. That year, it also won the 2008 STAGE (Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration) International script competition for Best New Play. Photograph 51 had subsequent productions at The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, Theater J in Washington DC, Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle, amongst many others, then in London's Noël Coward Theatre, in the West End, directed by Michael Grandage. The play premiered in Australia in Melbourne in 2019.