Mathematical theater

SUMMARY: Numerous plays explore mathematical concepts and mathematicians.

The genre of “mathematical theater” is a relatively recent phenomenon. A smattering of earlier examples of mathematics appeared on stage, but the turning point was Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play Arcadia, which opened the door to an entirely new realm of collaborative possibilities between theater and the mathematical sciences. Following on the heels of Arcadia was the award-winning Copenhagen (1998), a play by Michael Frayn about the fraught relationship between physicists Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. If there were any lingering doubts as to whether mathematics was a relatable theme for theater audiences, David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Proof (2000) laid them firmly to rest. The ensuing years have produced successful dramas, comedies, and biographical scripts that are marked not just by the inclusion of mathematical references, but also by the wholesale incorporation of mathematics into the content and structure of the play. Some even turn a critical lens back on traditional mathematics education and related gender issues.

Stoppard and Science

Bertold Brecht’s The Life of Galileo (1939) gave a cursory acknowledgment of the protagonist’s training as a mathematician. The Physicists (1962), by Friedrich Durenmatt, featured Isaac Newton as a character—or rather, a spy who posed as a patient in a mental institution pretending to believe he is Newton. Terry Johnson’s play Insignificance (1982) contained a scene where Marilyn Monroe explained special relativity to Albert Einstein.

But the best place to look for a forerunner for the substantial and explicit role of mathematics in Arcadia was in Tom Stoppard’s earlier writing. His first major success was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966), a dark comedy, which opened with a scene of the two Shakespearean characters trying to rectify the laws of probability with the fact they just witnessed nearly 100 occurrences of heads in as many flips of a coin. Zeno’s paradoxes appear in Jumpers (1972), and there was a cameo appearance of Leonhard Euler’s famous Bridges of Königsburg problem in Hapgood (1988), a play that also contained significant discussions of quantum mechanics. Hapgood came closest to Arcadia in its attempt to fully integrate mathematics and science into the mechanics of the play, but this was confusing for some audiences and the reviews for Hapgood tended to be rather harsh. Arcadia, in contrast, was greeted as something of a marvel and an instant classic when the play opened in London in 1993.

The opening scene of Arcadia was set in 1809, where 13-year-old Thomasina Coverly grew frustrated with her tutor, who asked her to find a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem. Thomasina had more romantic issues on her mind. This is evident by the first line of the play, “Septimus, what is carnal embrace?” Her restlessness and her genius eventually led her to discover the core principals of fractal geometry and chaos theory 150 years before their time. Arcadia also contained a second set of characters living in the present day in the same house, and among them is a mathematician whose expertise in dynamical systems allows him to decipher Thomansina’s notebooks for the other characters—and the audience. In a clever homage to Fermat, Thomasina wrote in one of her notebooks that “I, Thomasina Coverly, have found a truly wonderful method whereby all the forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and draw themselves through number alone. This margin being too mean for my purpose, the reader must look elsewhere for the New Geometry of Irregular forms discovered by Thomasina Coverly.”

A recurring theme in Arcadia was the juxtaposition of reasoned, classical thinking with untamed, romantic expression. With respect to the mathematics in the play, the Euclidean geometry of circles and spheres was contrasted with the fractal geometry of leaves and clouds. In a related way, the determinism inherent in Newton’s Laws of Motion was challenged by the unpredictability of chaotic systems and ultimately by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. These scientific ideas provided a compelling metaphorical backdrop for the interpersonal tensions that drive the emotional arc of the script. The result was a play where the science and the storytelling worked in a mutually enriching collaboration.

Copenhagen

Whereas Arcadia was a hybrid of mathematics and science, Frayn’s Copenhagen was very much a “physics play.” Its influence was too significant to ignore. The play was inspired by a real historical event. Werner Heisenberg had been put in charge of the Nazi nuclear program, and in 1941, he paid a visit to his mentor Neils Bohr, whose hometown of Copenhagen was under German occupation. The visit ended abruptly, and the deep friendship between these two pioneers of atomic physics ended with no clear resolution ever agreed upon as to what exactly was discussed. Frayn’s play explored this question by recreating the experiment of Heisenberg’s visit multiple times and, in the spirit of quantum mechanics, each run of the experiment results in a different outcome. Along the way, the fundamental ideas behind Bohr’s Theory of Complementarity and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle were given enough explication for the audience to apply these ideas to the process of human introspection as well as to the play itself.

Hardy, Ramanujan, Turing, and Beyond

The most high-profile play about mathematics since Proof is A Disappearing Number, created and produced by a London-based company called Complicite under the leadership of Simon McBurney. A Disappearing Number won the 2007 Olivier Award for Best New Play, among many others, and eventually it toured internationally. The starting point for A Disappearing Number is G. H. Hardy’s famous essay, A Mathematician’s Apology. Hardy appeared as a character alongside Srinivasa Ramanujan. The celebrated collaboration between Hardy and Ramanujan was also the subject matter for a less well-known play called Partition (2003)written by Ira Hauptmanand in a less direct way served as inspiration for The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem (2000)written by Rinne Groff. Whereas Partition was a fanciful account of a real historical friendship, The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem was a purely fictitious comedy about an international mathematics conference that features a protagonist loosely based on Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös.

Biography and historical fiction were the dominant forms for most new mathematical theater. Isaac Newton is the central subject of Leap (2004), by Lauren Gunderson as well as Calculus (2003) by Carl Djerassi. Seventeenth Night (2004), by Doxiadis Apostolos, tells the story of the final days of logician Kurt Gödel’s life in a way that was meant to illustrate the actual content of Gödel’s revolutionary Incompleteness Theorems. Georg Cantor’s bouts with mental illness were the subject of Count (2009) by John Martin and Timothy Craig. Cantor also appeared alongside his philosophical nemesis Leopold Kronecker in a scene in the experimental play Infinities (2002)written by John Barrow. Infinities actually consisted of five scenes or scenarios—one features the Hilbert Hotel introduced by mathematician David Hilbert—each of which explored some paradoxical aspect of infinity.

The drama, and ultimate tragedy, of Alan Turing’s life was the subject of at least four plays. The most well-known of these is Breaking the Code (1986) by Hugh Whitmore, which was available as an episode of PBS's Masterpiece Theater. The most ambitious play about Turing in terms of engaging the essence of his mathematical work was probably Lovesong of the Electric Bear (2003) by British playwright Snoo Wilson, which received a string of productions in the United States.

Plays By and About Women

Lauren Gunderson, who wrote plays since she was 16 years old and was known for her interpretations of feminism, science, and history, spoke widely on the rich intersection of science and theater. She cites Arcadia as a good example of the idea that “Science, like any theoretical idea, should lead to a deeper kind of play—a more layered, woven play where the science permeates the form of the play as well as the content.” She also encouraged playwrights to explore these themes, noting that the fundamental questions of mathematics and science do not exist in some inaccessible other world, but rather are deep and universal. One of her most well-known plays was Emilie: Le Marquise Du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight, which is about eighteenth-century woman mathematician Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, whose many achievements included a translation and commentary on Isaac Newton’s Principia. In 2010, Gunderson was the first Playwright in Residence at The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Emilie du Chatelet was known for passionately pursuing mathematics in a time when many women were barely literate. Kathryn Wallet’s Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen examined the modern-day tug of war between popularity and mathematics talent that girls often faced as they move into middle school and high school. This theme is also critically explored in Gioia De Cari’s autobiographical play Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp Through M.I.T.’s Male Math Maze. The author used her personal experiences, such as being asked to serve cookies at a seminar, for comic effect. However, the play was a serious exploration of traditional mathematics in higher education and the role of women in science and mathematics.

Mathematics-Themed Movies

In addition to stage productions, mathematics also provided the themes for successful movies. 1997’s Good Will Hunting, starred Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Minnie Driver. The storyline concerns Will Hunting, a young man with a personal history of suffering abuse, who was a mathematical genius living in poverty in South Boston. Hunting acted out his mental trauma by accumulating a criminal record of bodily assault on others. While out on parole, and working as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hunting took to completing mathematical proofs on a hallway chalkboard set out by mathematics professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård). Lambeau immediately recognized Hunting’s genius. Hunting, however, was in prison after breaking parole. Lambeau intervened with the judge to have Hunting placed in his custody. Under the supervision of Lambeau, Hunting continued to progress in his mathematics ability and showed amazing potential, but soon began to chafe under the over-bearing professor. Hunting later leaves Boston for Stanford University to reunite with Skylar (Minnie Driver), a Harvard medical student he had become romantically involved with. 

Other notable, mathematics-themed movies included The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015). The movie focused on the real-life Srinivasa Ramanujan. The protagonist Ramanujanborn in India in 1887was a destitute young man with no formal training in mathematics. He educated himself using a math textbook he managed to attain. He began a mail correspondence with a renowned English professor at the University of Cambridge named G.H. Hardy. Ramanujan later relocated to Cambridge and published works of advanced mathematical theories. The real-life Ramanujan was one of the inspirations for the fictional character of Will Hunting and was mentioned in the movie.   

Bibliography

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Lim, Alane. "Biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Mathematical Genius." ThoughtCo, 26 Dec. 2018, www.thoughtco.com/srinivasa-ramanujan-4571004. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Manaresi, Mirella. Mathematics and Culture in Europe: Mathematics in Art, Technology, Cinema, and Theatre. Springer, 2007.

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