An out-of-this-world deal to see Dava Sobel's play: free!

Pulitzer finalist Dava Sobel is definitely a star -- the asteroid 30935 davasobel is even named after her. And tonight you'll be starstruck when the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company offers a free reading of Sobel's play And the Sun Stood Still, which dramatizes the events that led Nicolaus Copernicus to publish his "radical" ideas of a heliocenteric solar system and the Earth's motion around the Sun.

The Boulder performance will be directed by producing BETC director Stephen Weitz, and feature ensemble members Bob Buckley, Josh Hartwell and Jim Hunt, as well as returning guest artists Brian Landis Folkins and Stephany Roscoe, and BETC newcomer Sean Scrutchins.

Sobel will be on hand for a Q&A after the reading, and to sign copies of her works.

In addition to And the Sun Stood Still, Sobel is the author of Longitude, winner of the 1997 British Book of the Year award, which was made into a film starring Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons, as well as Galileo's Daughter and The Planets. Copies of her latest book, A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos, will be available for purchase, courtesy the Boulder Bookstore.

The show starts at 6:30 p.m. tonight and is absolutely free -- first come, first seated (no reservations) -- at Performance Space Theater, Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder. For more information, call 303-665-1841 or go to www.boulderensembletheatre.org.