The Medical School and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford presented a play that focused on genetic manipulation in humans and discusses its ethical significance yesterday. Seth Rozin’s “Reinventing Eden” — performed in the Clark Center Auditorium — is the first-ever collaboration of the two groups.

The Med School and the new plays group will collaborate again on March 15 to put on a second performance — Mia McCullough’s “Echoes of Another Man” — which revolves around brain transplants. The production highlights moral concerns about maintaining identity and the implications of such brain surgeries.

“[These] issues [are] at the forefront of scientific, political and religious debate and [are] very important to dramatize — particularly for a medical, ethics and human biology student,” said David Goldman, executive director of the National Center for New Plays at Stanford, in an email. “Since [genetic manipulation and brain transplants haven’t] happened yet, dramatizing the subject allows for discussion and debate on those issues.”

Medical School Dean Philip Pizzo commended the interdisciplinary nature of the plays.

“It is not surprising that there is a strong association between medicine and the humanities that is often depicted in literature, art and theater,” he told the Stanford Report. “The boundaries of medicine rise from its fundamental underpinnings in basic science and extend to the ethereal limits of humanity and spirituality.”