In Philadelphia’s Little Italy some 20 years ago there was a small, shabby theatre where neighbors dropped in to see a bit of drama, a bit of clowning and got for good measure a dash of grand opera.

Marcela García is a columnist for The Boston Globe’s op-ed page. Starting in August 2025, she will be on leave from the Globe to spend an academic year at Harvard University as a 2026 Nieman Fellow.

The chromosome theory of heredity, developed in 1902–1904, became one of the foundation stones of twentieth-century genetics. It is usually referred to as the Sutton–Boveri theory after Walter Sutton ...