Post-show Forum- Come for the Show; Stay for the Company!
All of Epic Theatre Ensemble’s programming is designed to place a theatrical experience at the center of a larger public dialogue about vital social issues. As a part of that effort, all of our Off-Broadway productions include a Forum Series where following a performance, guest speakers join our company onstage to discuss the key questions and ideas that emerged with our audiences.
Michael J. Neufeld
Saturday October 13, 8:00 p.m.
Dr. Michael J. Neufeld is a Senior Curator in the Space History Department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He served as Chair of the department from 2007 to 2011. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, he received history degrees from the University of Calgary and the University of British Columbia, before getting a Ph.D. in Modern European History from The Johns Hopkins University in 1984. After teaching in upstate New York, Dr. Neufeld came to the Museum in 1988 as the A. Verville Fellow, and held Smithsonian and National Science Foundation fellowships in 1989-90. Dr. Neufeld has written many scholarly articles and three books: The Skilled Metalworkers of Nuremberg: Craft and Class in the Industrial Revolution (1989), The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (1995), which won two book prizes, and Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, which has won three awards. He has also edited or co-edited five books: Yves Béon’s memoir Planet Dora (1997), The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? (with Michael Berenbaum, 2000), Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: An Autobiography (with Alex Spencer, 2010), Spacefarers: Images of Astronauts and Cosmonauts in the Heroic Age of Spaceflight (2013), and Milestones of Space: Eleven Iconic Objects from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (2014). More recently he has published articles on the history of NASA planetary exploration since 1989 and on the origins of neutral buoyancy training for EVA. He has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, particularly regarding the Nazi rocket program and Wernher von Braun.