The job of comedy, Distracted director Wesley Service reminds us, is to use exaggeration to reveal something true. Distracted is the first comedy for CC@MIT, our science theater project. Comedy is a great strategy for provoking thought; Moliere is credited for saying that laughter opens the mind just long enough to slip in an idea. But, though Distracted includes information, it does not set out to inform, but rather to invite and provoke. We laugh at its characters and see ourselves, trying to fix problems with ingenious tools of our own invention – medicine, technology. How do we sort hope from hubris? We are honored to have accomplished scientists, scholars and educators help us puzzle that out. Join us for as many Central Conversations as you like – pre-show symposia and post-show conversations. The schedule is at CentralSquareTheater.org and in the lobby. One of the featured Central Conversations is with our teen ensemble. We are exceedingly proud of Youth Underground, whose original play exploring social media, Six Years On Line, will be here May 20-21. Make CST part of your summer, beginning with the June run of Never Far From Home, a cabaret featuring songs by area composers and performed by a dynamic ensemble including Kami Rushell Smith (Harriet Jacobs, The Mountaintop) and scripted by Lydia Diamond (Harriet Jacobs, and more recently, the Broadway run of Stick Fly). CST is thrilled to announce our 2013-14 season, and encourage you to subscribe. It’s the best way to guarantee premium seating and flexibility. The Nora kicks off in July with Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s outrageous farce, Absurd Person Singular, followed by a URT/Nora co-production: the achingly beautiful The Other Place. Arabian Nights returns for the holidays, and URT’s other projects include its first opera – Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Brundibar. Next season’s CC@MIT project is Sila – an Inuit word for breath/life – exploring the intersection of climate change and social upheaval in the Arctic.