Bone Wars

The Lowdown

The show digs up the very real, very petty rivalry between Gilded Age paleontologists O.C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, two scientists so consumed by hating each other that they discovered thousands of fossils in the process — and then more or less ruined themselves doing it. More than a century later, a jury of dinosaurs convenes to settle the feud once and for all: one man gets to stay in the afterlife, the other gets banished to extinction. Along the way you’ll bump into Buffalo Bill, Chief Red Cloud, Charles Darwin, and President Ulysses S. Grant, because why not.

Created by and starring Samuel Neagley (Cope) opposite Dalton Maltz (Marsh), directed by Laura Colleluori, with an original song by Lion King percussionist Valerie Naranjo. It’s smart, it’s silly, it’s downtown theater at its scrappiest — and it’s only here through July 26.