Santa Monica Playhouse Benefit Series and Riddle Productions encore a one-of-a-kind theatrical event, direct from New York and sold-out performances in Rome and Asia. Harvard-educated molecular biologist, visual artist and provocative visionary philosopher, Steven Friedman has the answers to life's big questions. Using personal narrative, poetry, art, and science, he delivers a spell-binding performance reflecting his prismatic, transformative and deeply consoling vision of the world. Neither play nor lecture, Friedman offers a solution to the world's pain based not on belief or faith but on logical rigor – a philosophy starting from Kierkegaard's story of an ancient torture device, Phalaris's bull, that turns the terrible sounds of pain into music. "He's not your typical playwright; he's a bona fide genius. [It's] as close as you're likely to come to receiving an exclusive tour . . . of a great mind."—Talkin' Broadway "Delivered warmly and wittily . . . a truly distinctive piece of theater." —The New Yorker To create is to enter Phalaris's bull, and our pain becomes beauty. Santa Monica Playhouse is supported in part by the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation and Playhouse PALS.