Science plays fall into three general categories: plays about social implications of science, plays about scientists as people, and plays which center on science itself. I examine the relative effectiveness of plays in the different categories in communicating scientific ideas and bridging the gap to the general public. This casts light on attitudes towards science, and on the medium of theater itself.

"Two people are contemplating a glorious sunset. One of them sees Rayleigh scattering, differential absorption, complicated refraction and reflection and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in the wonder of it. The other one inhales the sea air and hears the gulls calling, but is mainly lost in the ineffable delicacy of the nameless color, the white that is not white, that separates the salmon of the sun's dying glow from the lapis of the encroaching night, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in the glory of it. The knowledge that informs their sense of wonder is completely different, but the
heart that the wonder touches is the same heart."

Joe Haldeman, “The Three Cultures: Reflections of a Science Fiction Writer,” Windows on MIT series, Oct.18,1993[1]

I. Introduction

There is a gap between the worlds of science and of the humanities and arts. It has grown in the past few centuries as science has become more specialized and complex. Most people feel equipped to enjoy the arts at some level, whereas their enjoyment of science is limited to consumption of the luxuries and advances it provides, mixed with a certain distrust and incomprehension. Conversely many scientists look down on the “soft” sciences and are unaware of the painstaking and methodical labor involved in artistic creation. Is there in fact a difference between the scientist and the artist or “humanities” person which precludes understanding?  The answer may perhaps be found in theater,  where science and art have found an increasingly frequent meeting-ground in recent years.

In 1998 London’s National Theater produced a play by Michael Frayn called Copenhagen. It was produced in the Cottesloe theater, the small experimental venue of the National Theatre complex. Plays about science and ideas had been produced there before, but Copenhagen met with unprecedented success. In 1999 it transferred to the Duchess Theatre, a commercial venue in London’s West End  In April 2000 the New York production opened, and won the 2000 Tony Award for best play. This success sparked an interest in plays about science, as well as in the subject matter of the play itself. Articles were written about the role of science in theatre. In September, 200, the Interdisciplinary Science Reviews journal devoted an entire issue to science in theater. Seminars were  held on the subject including a major convention in New York in March 2000 which featured luminaries from the worlds of science and theater.

In fact plays about science did not spring up freshly born in 1998; dramatists have been writing them for years as they have written about all human activity. The appendix to this paper lists many examples, and there are more, depending how flexible ones definition of science may be; for example one could even consider Goethe’s Faust as an inquiry into the effects of a passion for knowledge.

While many of the articles recently written contain valuable insights I have felt the lack of a systematic approach to the subject. In this paper I attempt to deal with several plays in a systematic fashion. I find they may be placed in certain definite categories. I examine the plays in light of these categories and of the playwright’s aims. I also examine the methods with which scientific ideas are communicated, and the effectiveness of the plays in bringing science closer to the non-scientific audience. I have not constrained myself to the few years since Copenhagen was produced, but I have limited myself to the 20^th century, because that is when science drifted away from the general public and became abstruse and esoteric, and it is just that gap which I find disturbing and harmful. Theatre is perhaps the most immediately communicative of the arts, and it would be a hopeful sign if it were able to bridge this gap.

II. Categories

Plays about science may be regarded as belonging to three categories. The boundaries between them are not rigid, of course. Many plays may have elements of two or even of all three, but one will generally dominate, and analysis in terms of these categories will prove fruitful. First there are plays which deal with the relationship between science and society: with the benefit or harm of science for society, and with society’s attitude to science. The development of the atom bomb naturally provided fresh impetus for this treatment. In recent times the benefits of technological advances and perhaps the drama of space flight have mitigated the negative attitude; indeed recent plays do not treat science with the suspicion of earlier efforts. These plays however do not deal with science as such, but rather with its social implications. They are, generally speaking, plays about people and society. Of course this is the main stuff nearly all drama is made of; still some plays of this type do convey something of science itself as well as the drama of its practitioners.

A second category attempts to bring science close to audiences by concentrating on scientists as people. The idea seems to be to get the audience to identify with the scientist, to understand him and feel empathy, and in this way science itself will no longer seem so foreign and esoteric. This method uses the basic material of theatre, that is, empathy with the person on stage, and as such may be more effective in conveying understanding than plays of the first category. However, as we will see, much depends on the caliber of the playwright more than on the style and method employed.

Plays of the third category are rare. This type of play attempts to weave science into the dramatic  fabric of the play. Copenhagen is a wonderful example, and Stoppard’s Hapgood is a less successful attempt. The scientific ideas are not (or not only) explained to us; they are reflected in the entire theatrical experience, in the progress of the dramatic action as well as the staging, lighting,.music and scenery. This type of work demands of the playwright true understanding of the scientific ideas, whereas the previous categories may allow him to quote information without passing it through the prism of his own artistic nature.

It remains to be seen which of the three types are most effective in bridging the gap to the audience. This has several aspects. One aspect may be called didacticism: what methods does the playwright use to convey scientific ideas or facts to the audience? Another aspect is the arousal in the audience of sympathetic interest in science, or to put it plainly: does the play bring them closer to science and make them like it better? A third aspect is the use of science to create good theater. The question is not only whether theater has helped convey science, but whether science has been an effective inspiration for the theater art.

III. Science and Society

Two classic plays in this category are Bertold Brecht’s The Life of Galileo and Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Physicists.

Galileo::

 Galileo was written in between 1937-1939. Its first performance was in an English translation by Brecht himself together with Charles Laughton who played the leading role, in Los Angeles in 1947. The first performance in the original German came later, in 1955 in Cologne; this was the same year in which Brecht was interrogated by the House Unamerican Activities Committee. One may well imagine the effect of the drastic events taking place in the world on the play’s reception: first World War II and the bomb, and then the persecution in the US of suspected communists, which would serve to emphasize the problematic relationship of society and the individual. Brecht’s play places the scientist as seeker of truth in opposition to society with its different needs, but he also uses the scientist as a representative of a more general figure: the individual following his own light. In this way science is used as a metaphor, and the audience who are not scientists may identify with the protagonist and put themselves in his place as individuals with their own private dreams and aims which may be opposed to those of society.

Brecht did not do considerable scientific research before writing the play. He concentrated on the person of the scientist and the surrounding society. In his preface he speaks of the feelings of a researcher, his emotional reaction if his discovery is discredited. He tries to build a picture of the scientist as a real person with physical, vivid motives and feelings. In the American production Charles Laughton delivered a speech about the new astronomy with his torso bare. Brecht approves of this. “Galileo’s physical pleasure, when the boy rubbed his back, was transmuted into intellectual creativeness.” (ref. 1, p.13)

The play was written in Denmark and Brecht in his preface says he was “helped in the reconstruction of the Ptolemaic cosmology by assistants of Niels Bohr who were working on the problem of ‘splitting’ the atom.” {This is contrasted in scene four with Galileo’s new ideas, p.50)  Brecht continues: “My intention was, among others, to give an unvarnished picture of a new age – a strenuous undertaking since all those around me were convinced that our own era lacked every attribute of a new age.” (p.8) He writes that since writing the play  the world had changed due to Hiroshima and “Overnight the biography of the founder of a new system of physics read differently. The infernal effect of the Great Bomb placed the conflict between Galileo and the authorities of his day in a new, a sharper light.” (p.8)  He writes that the dropping of the bomb gave rise to public mistrust. The secrecy enforced on the research by politicians gave rise to mistrust, and “Great physicists fled precipitately from the service of their militaristic government.” “it had become a disgrace to discover anything.” (p.9)

That is, Brecht is not writing about science, but about the effect of science on people: on the scientist himself, and on society. He writes that  “I hope this work shows what society extorts from its individuals, what it needs from them. The urge to research, a social phenomenon no less delightful or compulsive than the urge to reproduce, steers Galileo into that most dangerous territory, drives him into agonizing conflict with his violent desires for other pleasures….In the end he indulges his science like a vice, secretly and probably with pangs of conscience.” (p,10)

Brecht is a poet. Galileo’s first speech on science is beautiful. Spoken by a good actor it cannot help giving the audience a sense of excitement: “The cities are narrow and so are men’s minds. Superstition and plague. But now we say: because it is so, it will not remain so. For everything moves, my boy.” (p.20)…”For where belief has prevailed for a thousand years, doubt now prevails”…And because of that a great wind has arisen, lifting even the gold-embroidered coat-tails of princes and prelates, so that the fat legs and thin legs underneath are seen; legs like our legs.” What glee there is in this line, what pleasure. “The heavens, it has turned out, are empty. And there is a gale of laughter over that.”(p.21)

“It has always been said that the stars are affixed to a crystal sphere to prevent them falling down. But now we have plucked up courage and we let them soar through space,unfettered and in full career, like our ships, unfettered and in full career.”..(p.21-22).

Thus the playwright conveys the sense of excitement of Galileo himself. But this is not the excitement of science itself but rather that of a feeling of a new age, of change and rebellion against the old, the authorities, the “princes and prelates.”

In scene three (p.40) Galileo and his friend Sagredo make a discovery on stage when they see that the small “stars” next to Jupiter move. The audience sees their excitement. This is intended to communicate the excitement of discovery. But immediately Brecht changes the subject to the social significance of this discovery: Sagredo (the friend) asks where God is in thes new scheme of things, and then they go on to talk about the effect of these ideas on mankind, and about the power of reason. It’s not very likely that a real scientist on making an observation with revolutionary implications would promptly abandon the subject in order to engage in a discussion on social psychology. But this is what interests the playwright; this is what the play is in fact about.

In Galileo’s final speech: “I maintain that the only purpose of science is to ease the hardship of human existence. If scientists, intimidated by self-seeking people in power, are content to amass knowledge for the sake of knowledge, then science can become crippled…and your progress will only be a progression away from mankind.” (scene 14, p. 118)

There is a hidden assumption that science in itself is not interesting; only its ramifications, so that in fact the heroes too behave like the politicians they scorn, who are only interested in the financial and political benefits of research.

Science and society:  Brecht puts into Sagredo’s mouth the dangers of society’s reaction to science: “It is a night of disaster when a man sees the truth. And an hour of delusion when he believes in the commonsense of the human race.” And he makes ominous predictions  of the dangers in store for Galileo:…”A little while ago, when I watched you at your telescope and you saw those new stars, it seemed to me as if I saw you standing amid the blazing faggots, and when you said you believed in proof, I smelt flesh burning.” (scene 3, p.45). This is good playwrighting: a sense of tension is built up and the audience is kept on edge wondering what is in store for Galileo whom they have surely grown to care for.

Already in Scene One we are presented with the spectre of the Inquisition in the background and the necessity of care in expressing ideas. In scene six we see Galileo among the monks and clerics, presented as the enemy. We are given to understand their point of view, and exactly what it is which was upset by Galileo’s argument: the picture of man as God’s creature and therefore at the center of things. An old cardinal explains this in a speech so infused with passion that he collapses in mid-sentence. This is not made ridiculous but rather shows how firmly and emotionally the views of society are based. In dramatic emphasis of this point, at the end of this scene the Cardinal Inquisitor arrives. In following scenes we are presented with the view that science is dangerous to society, as for example the little monk in scene 8, troubled by the contradiction between the holy decree and astronomical fact: “I have succeeded in fathoming the wisdom of that decree. It has revealed to me the danger to mankind that lurks in too much uncontrolled research, and I have decided to give up astronomy.” (p.76) This is surely one of those moments which Brecht remarks have become sharper since the dropping of the atomic bomb!

The Inquisitor himself explains the danger of science in a harrowing echo of real events: “For the last fifteen years Germany has been a slaughterhouse where men have butchered one another with Biblical texts on their lips…What would happen if all these people, so weak in the flesh and inclined towards every excess, were to believe only in their own commonsense..” (scene 12, pp. 101-102). We may imagine the audience, fresh from the horrors of the second World War, being swayed by this!

And yet we also see the ambiguity of society’s view, as its various representatives admit Galileo’s importance. The Grand Duke of Florence is his pupil and pays for his book. (p.98, scene eleven). The new Pope himself has a background in mathematics and calls Galileo “the greatest physicist of the age, the glory of Italy” (scene 12, p. 103). This ambiguity contributes to the play’s dramatic value, presenting the antagonism of scientist and society as complex rather than simplistic. Society takes pride in the scientist even as it rejects him, and we are led to sympathize or at least understand its motives for rejection. We are not allowed to take sides unthinkingly, and this empathy for opposing views makes for good drama. [2]

Didacticism:  The playwright’s main aim is to raise the question of the relationship between the scientist and his society, but he also manages to convey scientific ideas. This is achieved by having the protagonist explain his ideas to somebody else, effectively reinforced by visual demonstration: Galileo shows the boy why he doesn’t feel upside down when the earth turns, by putting a splinter into an apple and showing that no matter how it is turned, the bottom of the splinter is still touching the apple and the top is away from it. (p.24)

He also explains to his friend Sagredo:

 Sagredo: how can the earth shine?

 Galileo: in the same way as the moon shines. Both stars are illuminated by the sun – that is why they shine.”

(Scene 3, p.36)

In Scene Nine we are taught the principle of a good experimenter  as Galileo tells his assistant: “And what we wish to find, if we do find it, we shall regard with especial distrust.  So we shall start our observations of the sun with the inexorable determination to prove that the earth stands still.” (p.91)

A beautifully effective didactic point is made in this scene, when we are told Aristotle claims that iron will not float because it’s heavier than water. Then we see Galileo put a needle on a piece of paper – we can picture the audience beginning to smile, knowing what will happen – and of course when the paper is placed in the water it floats despite the weight of the needle. Galileo and his student laugh with glee and presumably the audience does too.

Attempt to bring science close to the public:  In scene four Brecht contrasts the experimental scientist with the old-school men of ideas  who prefer “the harmony of ideas” to simple fact. He makes the philosophers appear ridiculous, this is probably enjoyable to the audience and emphasizes the position of scientist as “good guy” up against a thick-headed environment. The mathematician too claims in the interest of reason that “one might suggest that what is in your telescope and what is in the Heavens may be two different things.” (p.52) Only Andrea, the young boy, sees through this silliness – again this would be pleasant to the audience who identify with the young boy, contrasted so strongly with the fussy old scholars.

 Galileo says: “My work…brought me into daily contact with draughtsmen, builders and instrument-makers. These people taught me many a new way of doing things. Illiterate, they relied on the evidence of their five sense, in most cases regardless of where such evidence might lead them…It seems that today, in order to find that high curiosity which made the true greatness of ancient Greece, one has to resort to the shipyards.”(scene four, p.55) And in scene nine: “For these new ideas we need people who work with their hands. Who else wants to learn about the origins of things? Those who see only the bread on the table don’t want to know how it is baked; that lot would rather thank God above than the baker. “ (p.90)

This is an anti-intellectual, anti-elitist view characteristic of Brecht’s own period.. It is perhaps an attempt on the playwright’s part to bring science close to the people by putting it solidly on their side, with the young and the honest men of the people, and against the authorities, the aristocrats, the stuffy intellectuals and the hidebound professors. 

In summary, This play presents not only science’s effect on society but the personal effect on the scientist.  It is a play about a scientist and his relation to society, but it is not about science and does not use science itself in dramatic form. The didacticism is effective: scientific facts are clearly conveyed to the audience by dramatic means. In addition, warmth and interest in science is developed by the positive character of the protagonist. But the role of scientist is a metaphor for the role of individual in society. One might say the play’s stature, for it is a great play, stems from the use of a detailed and specific case as a metaphor for the role of the individual in society.  This has undoubted theatrical and literary value, but  we are forced to ask whether the playwright  really makes science into theatre or just uses it to achieve a different aim. The play glorifies science. Galileo’s speech in scene fourteen makes science seem heroic and glorious. But it is a play about a hero, about a dramatic conflict, rather than about science itself.

The Physicists:

Friedrich Duerrenmatt’s play was written in 1961, during the Cold War, when nuclear

            destruction seemed an immediate threat. The play takes place in a mental institution where three patients murder their nurses. One of the patients thinks he is Isaac Newton, a second insists he is Albert Einstein and a third,  Mobius, claims that, through regular visits from King Solomon, he's discovered certain fundamental principles--whose disclosure could annihilate all humanity. Neither of the three are in fact insane: Mobius turns out to be a real physicist, and “Einstein” and “Newton” are actually spies sent to monitor his activities, as his discoveries could indeed destroy the world. Mobius has chosen life in the sanitorium as the only safe place for him and has no intention of leaving. The two spies are tired of their masquerade and want to leave, but after the murders they have committed to keep information from being spread, they realize they are now too enmeshed in the madness to leave.

Duerrenmatt clarifies his aims at the end of the published play in a page labeled “21 Points to the Physicists.” It is phrased as a set of logical propositions, and number 15 claims that a drama about physicists “cannot have as its goal the content of physics, but its effect.” Number 16: “The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.” [3] Here we have a clear exposition of the playwright’s intention in writing the play to discuss the effect of physics and not the science itself. This he does with wit and skill and humor. The characterizations are superficial but the action races amusingly as in the best of satires. The play mocks the desire of politicians to exploit the scientists, but the Secret Service men themselves are physicists!

Science and society:  Duerrenmatt’s subject is clearly the moral responsibility of the scientist. Since it is a good play, the answer is not clear cut. “Newton” says: “I know there’s a lot of talk nowadays about physicists’ moral responsibilities. We suddenly find ourselves confronted with our own fears and we have a fit of morality. This is nonsense. We have far-reaching, pioneering work to do and that’s all that should concern us. Whether or not humanity has the wit to follow the new trails we are blazing is its own look-out, not ours.” But “Einstein” counters “we cannot escape our responsibilities. We are providing humanity with colossal sources of power. That gives us the right to impose conditions.” (ref. 4, pp. 75-76) Mobius himself has “gone mad” out of concern for the results of his research and from a sense of responsibility, he says “we ought not to be let loose on humanity.” (p.80)

Didacticism: The playwright makes no attempt to convey scientific ideas and probably has not delved into them. The physics in the play is clever gibberish. Its relation to real problems is almost tongue in cheek, eg. “theory of equivalents!” (p.67) , unitary theory of elementary particles (p.75).

The theatrical form is standard satirical comedy, and it is successful in making its point about the relation between science and society. The playwright achieves what he has set out to do, but unlike Brecht he goes no further than that.

IV. Scientists as People

Three straightforward examples:

Of recent plays about science, most lie in this second category of plays about scientists as people, perhaps because the natural subject of plays is people, or quite possibly because playwrights feel they already know about people, and don’t know much about science! An extreme example of a “people play” is QED, a play by Peter Parnell which opened in New York in April, 2002. This play is nearly a monodrama, two hours with Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, interspersed with dialogue with his student. Feynman is in the process of preparing a lecture. Meanwhile he dances round his office,  and talks about physics and about himself. The play charmed audiences and received excellent reviews, though people who knew Feynman had trouble accepting actor Alan Alda in his place. However most people did not know Feynman and came out of the theater enchanted by the man and with at least some idea of his physics. The tactic of bringing a physicist to the audience certainly brought them closer to physics itself. This was due to the personality of Feynman himself, and the skill of the playwright, director and actor, who managed to sustain interest in a two-hour near-monologue.

Didacticism: The real Feynman was expert at this, and the play makes use of his skill. QED is explained in classic Feynman style: “You want to see an example of screwy? Take a surface of glass. You see me because light is coming  through the glass and hitting my face, but you also see yourself because some of the light is reflecting back. At this angle, for every 100 photons hitting the glass, 96 go through the glass and 4 hit the glass and go back to you. How does any individual photon make up its mind which way to go? Already, it's a mystery! Try as we might to explain how a photon makes up its mind, it is actually impossible to predict which way a given photon will go. Does this mean that physics, a science of great exactitude, has been reduced to calculating only the probability of an event and not predicting exactly what will happen? Yes. Nature permits us to calculate only probabilities.”

The success of this play might almost be attributed to Feynman himself, whose personality was the most effective populizer of science in the 20^th century. The production team and actor give him able assistance. Though the theater art-form may not have gained from the use of science in this play, its audiences certainly have done so.

Another example of this category is David Auburn’s Proof,  which won the 2001 Pulitzer, Tony and New York Drama Critics awards. Proof  is the story of Catherine, a young woman whose father was a brilliant mathematician who went mad. She too may share her father’s brilliance, and the mathematical “proof” of the title may be her own rather than her father’s. A scientist friend who saw the play expressed grave doubt that a beginning college student would be equipped to solve advanced problems in number theory, but this did not disturb audiences. The play is well written, and has been compared favorably to Copenhagen in the humanity of its characters. (NY reviewer John Simon, ref. no. 14)  In fact it is a far more conventional play than Copenhagen. It has been hailed as part of the new movement of science plays, but science plays no significant part here: phrases about mathematics are flung around, but audiences learn nothing new and the play is basically a fairly moving realistic conventional drama. It is probably good to have mathematicians portrayed as normal and interesting people, and may remove some of the distrust and fear of this field of interest.

String Fever, produced on Broadway in March 2003, has its heroine in love with a physicist whose interest is string theory. The strings of the title also belong to the heroine, who is a violinist. The play is about single motherhood, not about physics, yet it does widen the audience’s horizon by introducing them to concepts which must surely have been unfamiliar to them. A staged reading of the play was prefaced by a popular lecture on the theory. (ref. 11).  There is a certain parallel drawn between physics and life. In the words of one reviewer, “Just as the string theory in physics attempts to unite the two schools of physics, the spatial qualities of Relativity and molecular concept of the Quantum theory, our heroine, the intrepid Lily (Cynthia Nixon), appropriately an aspiring violinist who now teaches music, tries mightily to discern a string pattern in her unsatisfactory life.” (ref.10)  The treatment of science in this play is obviously superficial, but the audience benefits from being exposed to the ideas.

Bad Example:

Howard Brenton wrote an English version of Brecht’s The Life of Galileo in 1980 which was produced at the National Theater. His play The Genius was originally intended to be a modern parallel produced at the same time in a smaller venue at the same theatre.  However for various reasons it was only written in 1982, and produced by London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1983.

Brenton’s introduction to the play focuses on the personality of a modern Galileo. He is interested in the kind of person he would be: “I thought he’d be an American, glamorous, brilliant and articulate, a man who seems to ‘have everything’, the good looks of a film star, the brain of an Einstein…He should be a 1980’s ‘Renaissance man’, universally admired and a light in people’s lives….But like Brecht’s Galileo, Leo Lehrer cannot deal with the moral dilemmas his work forces him to confront. And , again like Brecht’s character, this golden human being falls apart and becomes gross, in a 1980’s manner. He is a dangerous man to know, arrogant, promiscuous, cruel and self-indulgent, a wrecker of the lives around him. I try to dramatize his reformation.” Brenton continues: Lehrer and his student Gilly “struggle with a dangerous idea – that nuclear science is a profoundly malign pursuit and that, for the first time in human history, we must deny ourselves a technological ‘advance’. It was a strange play to write, trying to dramatize the intellectual love affair between two characters light years ahead of their author’s intelligence.”

The hero is a Nobel-prize-winning mathematician in his 30’s. He has refused to do work he thought would be harmful. “I had the new E equals MC squared but flushed it down the john. I feared it would burn the world.” (ref. 2,  p. 170) Also in the university is Gilly, a first year student, who writes an equation in the snow. Shortly afterwards Leo comes out in the snow and begins to make love to a colleague’s wife. Graham, the colleague, then appears and finds them but Leo has seen the equation and is so excited by it he pays no mind to anything else. Here Brenton begins to build his picture of  the scientist genius oblivious to all else, to people’s pain and relationships.

Leo hunts up Gilly and they have a conversation riddled with clichés, a stereotyped portrait of a pair of geniuses: Leo: “when did you understand Godel’s theorem? Gilly: “when I was about nine.” Leo asks what her teachers had thought of her and she replies “I do bad work deliberately. Just enough, so they won’t realize.”  Here we have the image of They, the Philistines against the geniuses  ( pp188-189)   Leo explains that the implications of Gilly’s equation are dangerous: “Albert Einstein said that, if he had known that his 1905 paper on Special Relativity was to lead to the atom bomb, he’d have given up mathematics” (p.193) This, by the way, is not accurate at all. Special relativity is not necessary and was not  responsible for the discovery of nuclear fission, because the phenomena involved occur in the non-relativistic domain; E = mc2    is irrelevant .; it is quantum mechanics that is necessary for an understanding because of the need for barrier penetration.

 Leo too has discovered Gilly’s equation, but he is aware of its dangerous implications for weapons research.. Gilly reacts with passion and we are treated to another predictable poetic speech: “The equations are as natural as – a tree. If a murderer ties someone to the tree and kills them, or if lovers lie down and make love under its leaves, the tree doesn’t care! And if men with blue eyes in America do something horrible with the equations – I don’t care. I can’t. What I think is me and what I write is me and that’s that.”

In Act 2, scene 3 (p.220) Graham bursts out to Leo: “Ha. I could never take that about you. Your freedom and b-beauty. The person who throws off all human feeling is so free, so beautiful, real people like me, we bumblers, we sweaters, we can’t handle the chaos.”

We have here the cliché picture of the genius, distanced from ordinary men. This sort of image does not seem aimed to endear science to the public by bringing the scientist closer, on the contrary the emphasis is on his distance and superiority.

Didacticism: The didacticism here is weak.  Again we see the same techniques we have met previously: science is explained by the protagonist to another person, and there is an attempt to visually demonstrate it. But the attempt is feeble and unlikely to impress the audience.  A jacket thrown in the air demonstrates gravity. A torch switched on represents electricity. The strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force are more difficult: he grabs her round the waist in preface to “the strong nuclear force” and spins her shoulder bag to show the weak nuclear force. It is unlikely that this would convey any new information to the audience.

We do find a new technique of didacticism which will appear in later plays: name dropping!: “Hell, when we work out what quarks are, the mathematics were those of a Frenchman, Evariste Galois, who wrote down all his ideas the night before he was killed in a duel in the eighteen eighties. “

In sum, Brenton attempts to deal with the moral dilemma presented by science when discoveries can have dangerous effects on the world. But though the dilemma is presented it is not in fact dealt with. Lots of speeches are made about it but we gain no fresh  insight. The playwright assumes the audience knows about the bomb, that it is a result of science and that it’s bad. Beyond this nothing new is really said.  That is why I put the play in the category of “scientists as people”; it does not in fact deal with the relationship between science and society so much as it attempts to portray the souls of the scientists, and this is done in a superficial manner riddled with clichés and gives no insight into the way a scientist might think about science. Instead we are treated to a stereotype of a genius who could just as well be Byron or Gauguin. The audience may emerge from the play feeling sympathy for the protagonists, particularly if the actors are skilled and charismatic. But they will not gain any understanding of science or its practitioners. True, Gilly’s passion for mathematics is warmly presented and may come as a surprise to anyone who did not know one could feel passionate about mathematics. But – unlike other plays discussed here – there is nothing about this passion which relates to the mathematics itself. She could be an actress ranting about her vocation for the theater.  This play affords no real understanding of science which might bridge the gap between science and audience. On the contrary it. contributes to the gap by making science appear an endeavor far removed from ordinary mortals, esoteric, glamorous, sexy perhaps, but with no understanding of the actual scientific undertaking. The empathy one might feel for its scientists is superficial, and the stereotyped portrayal of their genius probably does more harm than good, as it is related neither to reality nor to science.

Arcadia:

Stoppard’s Arcadia is not a play about science but a lovely and brilliant drama about people who are fascinated by knowledge. The action crosses between two different time periods in the same house. In 1809 we meet a thirteen year old girl named Thomasina and her tutor. In the 20^th century a literary scholar arrives at the house to investigate his theory that Byron stayed there. Among the house’s present-day occupants are a rival literary academic named Hannah, and Valentine, a mathematician.

The characters in this play are imbued with a real love of knowledge and an infectious, absorbing passion for finding things out. Thomasina  is ready to cry at the demolition of the Alexandria library (ref. 6, p.38) , works with absorbed interest trying to write a formula for everything  ( p.5). and  is fascinated by the irreversibility of processes and “arrow of time” (pp.4-5) Bernard, the literary scholar, is modern and sophisticated without the artless excitement of the thirteen year old girl, yet he becomes so excited about his field of interest that Hannah reacts to his outburst almost taken aback, “such passion” (p.50) Hannah herself elaborates on the need for knowledge as she feels it: “It’s all trivial…it’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in.” (p.75) This is the true achievement of the play in bringing science to an audience. It effectively communicates the reason that scientists do science. People leave the theater understanding what it means to be excited at finding things out.

Didacticism:  Stoppard does manage to convey ideas to the audience, by the now-familiar technique of having one character explain them to another. Valentine explains chaos to Hannah in clear and simple terms, prompted by her questions (pp. 47-48) Later he goes into thermodynamics :“Heat goes to cold. It’s a one-way street.  Your tea will end up at room temperature. What’s happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It’ll take a while but we’re all going to end up at room temperature.” (p.78, and further clarification of the ideas on p.93. By the way this is scientific nonsense: everything in the room might reach room temperature at some point, but certainly not the sun and the stars. Stoppard plainly did not even give his play to a scientist to read before its production).  Thomasina’s tutor explains Fermat’s theorem to her, and she very nearly finds the proof.  Ideas fly through the air in this play like sparkling wine.

There is an argument between the man of the humanities and the scientist, when Bernard scoffs at Newton, quarks, quasars as opposed to poetry (( p.61).  This brings these words and these issues before the audience as if they are important and exciting things. Most remarkable, Stoppard  assumes his audiences know what these words mean!

He also offers insight into the way researchers do eventually find things out. Bernard finds the information he has been methodically searching for almost by accident, with  Valentine casually supplying the vital information (“He’s in the game book”) about Byron. (p.50).

There is some attempt to reflect the scientific subject matter in the structure of the play, with increasing interweaving of the two time periods in the same place. Stoppard seems to have been inspired in this by some of the ideas of chaos and the arrow of time which he discusses, but it is possible that he did not develop a sufficiently deep understanding of the ideas to utilize them in the dramatic form. The parallel is not made clear to the audience but remains vague and suggestive in the background. That is why I consider this play in the second category, though there is room for analysis in the light of the third. Viewed as a play dealing with scientists as people, it achieves something which the others have not: it brings science close to the audience not by making the scientists themselves attractive but by conveying something of the excitement of the search for knowledge in itself.

V. Science in the Fabric of the Play

Hapgood:

Another play by Tom Stoppard deals with quantum theory. Hapgood, first performed in London in 1988, concerns a group of spies, one of whom is also a physicist named Kerner. In a technique with which we have become familiar, Kerner explains the ideas of quantum physics to other characters and thus the audience too benefits from these lectures, which are not brief but give a superficial and occasionally misleading picture of the subject.[4] Stoppard is frank about his lack of background, and in an article called “Matter of Metaphor” in the New Theater Review he explains that he is "not even a closet scientist" having gotten his notion of the quantum theory from a dozen

popular books. But he insists that he was using science as metaphor. "Hapgood", he wrote, " is not 'about' physics, it's about dualities. No - let the playwright correct the critic in me - Hapgood is not about dualities, of course, it's about a woman called Hapgood and what happened to her between Wednesday morning and Saturday afternoon in 1989.justbefore the Berlin wall was breached…. As a matter of fact, the

story has much more to do with espionage than physics, but I won't deflect any compliments that might be going for a play with a reasonably plausible physicist on board, because the springs of the play are indeed science; it was only in looking around for a real world that might express the metaphor, that I hit upon the le Carre' world of agents and double agents. The physics came first, the woman called Hapgood came second."

The action of the play attempts to reflect the quantum ideas its physicist expounds, so that nothing is where it seems to be and everything may be interpreted in different ways. The uncertainty of the world of spies reflects the uncertainty of everything (as Stoppard has understood uncertainty). Kerner says (ref.7, p.10) “Objective reality is for zoologists. ‘Ah, yes, definitely a giraffe.’ But a double agent is not like a giraffe. A double agent is more like a trick of the light. Look. Look at the edge of the shadow. It is straight like the edge of the wall that makes it.” Then follows an explanation of the wave/particle problem, the two slit experiment, and so on, for three pages.  This is accurate and praiseworthy. The problem is that the audience, I think, would not pay attention. It is like a lecture at school rather than experiential. Theatre to be effective must create experience; verbal lectures seldom hold attention.

An attempt to give physical dramatic form to an idea recreates the Koenigsberg Bridge problem, which involves trying to cross all seven bridges of that town without crossing any one of them more than once. This is explained by Kerner on page 45 and it turns out that the choreography of the first scene has mirrored the problem. But who save the playwright would have realized this in the play’s first scene?

Kerner draws a parallel between the particle world and intelligence: “The particle world is the dream world of the intelligence officer. An electron can be here or there at the same moment. You can choose: it can go from here to there without going in between…It defeats surveillance because when you know what it’s doing you can’t be certain where it is, and when you know where it is you can’t be certain what it’s doing” and so he goes on. At this point it becomes obvious that Stoppard is trying to create a theatrical situation which mirrors a scientific idea. This is interesting in principle, far more so than an attempt to expound the idea by having characters lecture about it. The quick, confusing jumps from scene to scene seem to be inspired by Stoppard’s understanding of quantum reality. In this way the scientific idea has influenced the theatrical creation.

Unfortunately it is not a very good or effective creation. The play was not successful, perhaps because it is full of too much talk about physics and the structure and action are not well defined. There are sparks of brilliance and interest - my favorite is Kerner’s characterization of voting as “power of an equation in nature, the masses converted to energy.” (p.73) But it throws off the rules of classical drama and does not substitute anything satisfactory in its stead. One may abandon the classic structure of exposition, climax and denouement, but the dramatic action must unfold in some way which takes hold of the audience.  This play, though in theory a very interesting attempt, does not seem to succeed in its own medium. Perhaps if Stoppard had indeed delved more deeply into the quantum world he might have found a structural solution of interest rather than this indefinite and didactic jumpiness.

Copenhagen:

Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen met with phenomenal success, not only as a piece of theater which has been performed since its premiere all over the world, but also in the wave of interest it engendered in its own historical subject and in the hitherto untreated field of science plays. Scores of articles have been written about it. Symposiums have been held on it in Copenhagen, New York, Washington DC, and various universities. The March 2000 New York symposium featured such legendary scientific figures as Hans Bethe and John Wheeler, both of whom could testify from personal experience about the people and issues involved. The considerable interest aroused by the play’s success led the Bohr family to release documents which cast new light on the issue in question.

Science plays had appeared before, but Copenhagen eclipsed them in the breadth and depth of its science. In addition its form is striking. It seems, though the playwright has not referred to this in any of his extensive postscripts, to reflect quantum reality using theatrical means.

The play tells the story of a meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1941. When the play was written it was not known what had happened in this meeting, which definitely did take place, though the new documents have cast fresh light on this question. This is material for another article, and many have been written already;  Frayn himself considers the question in a post-postscript.[5]

Formally the play merges past and present. Bohr and his wife Margrethe discuss the meeting years after it took place, and now and again the meeting itself takes place, as the past takes over the present. Bohr relives the drowning of his son, and the present becomes the past. (ref.5, p.30)  The characters speak to each other and they think and we hear their thoughts. We find ourselves in the present and in the past, in the Bohr house and walking through the twilight, so that the theatrical action takes on the fluidity of thought and the indefiniteness of the quantum world.

The playwright hints at the parallelisms he seems to be drawing: Heisenberg says (p.4) “now we’re all dead and gone, yes, and there are only two things the world remembers about me. One is the uncertainty principle, and the other is my mysterious visit to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941.” The uncertainty of the events of the meeting are drawn parallel to the uncertainty of quantum reality.

Less obvious is the parallelism between thought and the quantum world. Frayn discusses this in his postscript to the play: “Thoughts and intentions, even one’s own…remain shifting and elusive….What the uncertainty of thoughts does have in common with the uncertainty of particles is that the difficulty is not just a practical one, but a systematic limitation which cannot even in theory be circumvented.” (p.10) The play’s audience is led to understand this not through philosophical exposition but at the very moment when the characters themselves begin to grasp it:

Bohr: A curious sort of diary memory is.

Heisenberg: You open the pages, and all the neat headings and tidy jottings dissolve around you.

Bohr: You step through the pages into the months and days themselves.

Margrethe: The past becomes the present inside your head.

(p.6)

Later Heisenberg says (p. 88): “How difficult it is to see even what’s in front of one’s eyes. All we possess is the present, and the present endlessly dissolves into the past.”

Uncertainty or indefiniteness is also reflected in the dramatic action of the play: in the blurring of boundaries. Bohr sees Heisenberg as his young colleague and pupil but we gather the relationship blurs so that he sees him also as his lost son. Bohr opens the door to Heisenberg on his vist and Heisenberg says “suddenly I’m free of all the dark tangled currents in the water” and Bohr: “Christian is alive, Harald still unborn”, and Margrethe: “Look at them. Father and son still. Just for a moment.” (p. 54, also see p.59) Another blurred boundary is guilt: Heisenberg’s guilt about the bomb, Bohr’s about his son.

There are continuous attempts to draw analogies between science and life: Bohr and Heisenberg paint a picture of their lives as electrons orbiting an atom (p.61). Later Margrethe says of Heisenberg “Your talent is for skiing too fast for anyone to see where you are. For always being in more than one position at a time, like one of your particles.” All this brings science to life on the stage. People’s lives and their characters are shown in its light, it is used to describe the world as we the audience see it in this moment in the theater. This reaches its height in act 2 (p.88) in a very moving moment, where Heisenberg and Bohr meet and as we watch them each see each other, we get a real sense of the uncertainty of life. And then, the most moving scene at the end:

Margrethe: Silence. The silence we always in the end return to.

Heisenberg: And of course I know what they’re thinking about.

Margrethe: All those lost children on the road.

Bohr: Heisenberg wandering the world like a lost child himself.

Margrethe: Our own lost children.

Heisenberg: And over goes the tiller once again.

Bohr: So near, so near! So slight a thing!

The writer has conveyed the way we live, the past always within us, and the ephemeralness and immediacy of our lives. Margrethe asks “And when all our eyes are closed…what will be left of our beloved world?” and Heisenberg replies:

“But in the meanwhile…there it is. Preserved, just possibly, by that one short moment in Copenhagen. By some event that will never quite be located or defined. By that final core of uncertainty at the heart of things.” And so the play ends.

This is the true greatness of the play. Human experience is captured, the personal uncertainty and evanescence familiar to each one of us, and the scientific idea is used as a metaphor and expression for this, both within the dramatic story and in its structure.

Didacticism: It seems anticlimactic to discuss didacticism but a few words should be added because Frayn, who engaged in a considerable amount of research before writing the play, manages to convey the scientific ideas fairly well. The audience certainly comes to understand a good deal about the principles of uncertainty and complementarity, if only because they are constantly being expounded. The characters live in the world of science as in few of the plays we have met before, and are accordingly successful in clarifying its ideas. For example (p.70)

Heisenberg: Copenhagen is an atom. Margrethe is its nucleus. About right, the scale? Ten thousand to one?

Bohr: Yes, yes.

Heisenberg: Now, Bohr’s an electron. He’s wandering about the city somewhere in the darkness, no one knows where. He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere and nowhere….I’m a photon…I manage to collide with him…but what’s happened?...He’s been slowed down, he’s been deflected!

Rarely have we seen science brought to life onstage in such clear and convincing fashion.

In addition names are dropped recklessly as marbles: dozens of scientists are mentioned in passing, as well as the two-slit experiment (p.25) and “Schroedinger’s wretched cat”(p.26). Not every audience has the patience for this; I have talked to people who saw the play who found the constant presence of scientific names and ideas boring and waited for emotional occurrences. However the spectacular success of the play makes it seem that the majority found it rewarding.

VI. Conclusion

In the first part of this paper I mentioned three aspects to bridging the gap between science and the theatre world. The first I called “didacticism”. We have seen that the most common method of achieving this is by having a character explain something to somebody else, and perhaps demonstrate it visually. This, it seems to me, has some limited effect. It is limited because it is talk, and the effective material of theater is emotion. People are not deeply affected by talk in theatre (and perhaps in general as well), but by empathetic emotional experiences. It is also limited because there is necessarily a limit to the extent, breadth and depth of ideas that may be conveyed in a speech in a play.

The third category of play may achieve this in depth by giving the audience an intuitive feeling about the ideas discussed and by bringing them closer to everyday human experience, as Frayn attempts to do with uncertainty. Ideally this could benefit scientists as well, for today science has reached many areas where intuition is difficult, and were the playwright to gain real understanding of scientific ideas he might indeed employ his special gift in translating them into intuitive terms. I suppose however that it’s highly unlikely that playwrights could get a sufficiently developed understanding of such ideas to be able to do so.

The second aspect or method of bridging the gap is to get the audience to know and like the scientist. The effectiveness of this depends on the quality of play and actor, but we have seen that in Arcadia  the playwright manages to communicate the very stuff of scientific excitement. Perhaps it is less important to teach scientific ideas in the theatre than to get the audience to understand that science is exciting and why people do it.

What of the contribution of science to theatre? Some of the plays discussed are wonderful pieces of theatre, but not necessarily due to their subject matter. Galileo’s greatness lies in the beauty and depth of the characters and text. The sharp satire of The Physicists is stimulating and provocative but reflects no new development of theatre as an art form. Only the plays in the third category are exceptions to this. The scientific idea leads to experiments in the form of the drama itself which can be unsuccessful and annoying (Hapgood) or, in the case of Copenhagen, effective, arresting and full of potential for future developments of the art form. Will we see scientific ideas used to further develop the drama? The playwright must understand and internalize the scientific idea in order to make use of it in this way. Frayn devoted a great deal of time and effort to understanding quantum mechanics, and his intellectual background was presumably an advantage. There are not many playwrights willing or able to make a similar effort; playwrights often reflect their audiences. They live in the world for which they write, and it would take a most unusual talent to go outside it and explore such difficult territory. The spectacular success of Copenhagen has proved an incentive in that direction, witness the increasing amount of plays about science, but we have not yet been rewarded with a similar achievement.

In conclusion plays of all three categories may be successful to a limited extent in making the audience more sympathetic to science, and in conveying scientific ideas. Deeper success of future plays in bringing science to the world would rest on clearer analysis of the scientific idea before dramatizing it – what does the scientific idea mean intuitively in terms of our feelings and world picture. It is rare to find a playwright capable or interested in doing so, but perhaps now that the gap has been bridged even a little this may change.

References:

[1] Brecht, Bertolt, The Life of Galileo, translated by Desmond I. Vesey,  Eyre Methuen,     London, 1963

[2] Brenton, Howard, Plays:Two, Methuen, London, 1989

[3] Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 1 September 2002, vol. 27, no. 3

 Institute of Materials, published by Maney Publishing

[4] Durrenmatt, Friedrich, The physicists, translated by James Kirkup, Grove Press, New York, 1964

[5] Frayn, Michael, Copenhagen, Methuen, London, 1998

[6] Stoppard, Tom, Arcadia, Faber and Faber, London, Boston, 1993

[7] Stoppard, Tom, Hapgood, Faber and Faber, London, Boston, 1989

Internet:

[8] Site of the International Brecht Society:                                                            

          http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/german/brecht/index.html

Reviews of String Fever:

 [9]  http://ibs.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm?int_news_id=3216

[10] http://www.theatrescene.net/ts/articles.nsf/

[11] Rockefeller University on String Fever:

            http://www.rockefeller.edu/events/string_fever/transcript.php

Reviews of QED:

[12]      http://physicsweb.org/article/review/14/5/3

[13]     http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~rockmore/QuantumReflections.html

Review of Proof:

[14]    http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/theater/reviews/3295/

A List of Science Plays

Most of the plays listed here are contemporary. This is because there has been a flood of them in recent years, but also because the new interest in the subject has led to compilation of such lists. A comprehensive one,  on which I have relied heavily here as a basis,  appears in an article by Harry Lustig and Kirsten Shepherd-Barr "Science as Theater”,  American Scientist 90 (6) 2002. I believe it would be possible to compile a similarly extensive list of pre-20^th century plays but that is beyond the scope of this work at present. A few are presented as an example.

Contemporary Plays

Auburn, David.  Proof. (2000)  See main text

Berger, Glen.  Great Men of Science, nos. 21 and 22  (1998)  Directed at

Yale Drama by Wier Harman and with music by John Kline.  Set in Paris

1793-4, the Reign of Terror, it examines the ideals of the Enlightenment

scientist in the context of political and social upheaval.

Brenton, Howard.  The Genius. (1983)  See main text

Cheng, K.E. Einstein’s Dreams (2002)

Clyman, Bob.  The Secret Order.  (1999-2000)  About the pressures

threatening to destroy a young scientist.

D’Andrea, Paul and Klein, John, The Einstein Project (2000)

Djerassi, Carl, and Roald Hoffman.  Oxygen.  (2000)  With scenes

alternating between contemporary Sweden and 18th-century France and England,

the play asks, "who should be awarded the first, fictional,

"Retro-Nobel" award for a scientific discovery before the twentieth

century? 

Djerassi, Carl.  An Immaculate Misconception.   (2001) A play by the

inventor of the birth control bill, about sex in the age of fertility

treatments. 

Edson, Margaret.  Wit.  (1999)  Set in a hospital ward, the play depicts an

uncompromising professor of metaphysical poetry who endures grueling

treatments for ovarian cancer buttressed by her love of Donne's Holy

Sonnets and late-budding friendships she never had.

Frayn, Michael.  Copenhagen.  (1998; 2000)  See main text.

Friel, Brian.  Molly Sweeney.  (1994)  Based on neurologist  Oliver

Sacks's short story about a blind woman given an operation and the

surprising and painful consequences of gaining sight.

Giron, Arthur.  Moving Bodies (1999-2000)   Dramatizes the biography  and

contributions of the great, idiosyncratic  physicist Richard Feynman,

including  his role in the building of the atomic bomb and the explanation

of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Johnson, Terry.  Insignificance  (1999).  Imagining a meeting between Albert

Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and Joe DiMaggio in a hotel room.

Jones, Charlotte.  Humble Boy.  (2002)  A neurotic fictional astrophysicist

in a dysfunctional family tries to create a "theory of everything" out

of string theory and general relativity.

Kopit, Arthur.  Y2K.  (1999) 

Landau, Tina.  Space.  (2001)  A meditation on astrophysics. 

McGrath, Tom.  Safe Delivery.  (1999)

Mac Low, Clarinda, James Hannaham, and Tanya Barfield.  The Division of Memory. ( 2001)  At the end of his life, an African-American research biologist reflects on his place in the twentieth century.

Martin, Steve.  Picasso at the Lapin Agile.  (1996)  A farcical comedy that

imagines a meeting between Picasso and Einstein in a cafe in Paris.

Mullin, Paul.  Louis Slotin Sonata.  (2001)  The moral reamifications of scientific activity.

Parnell, Peter. QED. (2001) See main text

Poliakoff, Stephen.  Blinded by the Sun. (1996)  How the media affect

modern scientific research.

Smith, Anna Deavere.  Untitled.  (2000)  One-woman show  about doctors,

patients and their narratives.  (Yale Tercentennial performance event at

Yale Medical School)

Speier, Susanna.  Calabi Yau.  (2002) A "string-theory comedy" in which

New York subway workers try to build a particle accelerator in abandoned

subway tunnels.

Stanley, Jeffrey, Tesla’s Letters (1999)

Stevenson, Shelagh.  An Experiment with an Air Pump.  (1999)  About medical

experimentation's ethical dimensions. 

Stoppard, Tom.  Arcadia.  (1993)  See main text

Stoppard, Tom.  Hapgood.  (1988) See main text

Stoppard, Tom.  Galileo.  (1970)  Unpublished play that challenges Brecht's Galileo and was originally intended for performance in the London Planetarium; manuscript is in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Thיגtre de Complicitי.   Mnemonic.  (2000)  About memory, connection, and

evolution, with the Iceman as its starting point.

Wells, Matthew.  Schrצdinger's Girlfriend.  (2002)  The eponymous author

of the "Schrצdinger's Cat" paradox applies the lessons of quantum

mechanics to a torrid love affair.

Wertenbaker, Timberlake.  After Darwin.  (1998)

Wilson, Lanford, Rain Dance, about the Los Alamos project (2003)

Early 20^th century

Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo.  (1939; 1947)  See main text.

Capek, Karel.  R.U.R. (1921)  The devastating effect of robots on society.

Davis, Hallie Flanagan.  E=mc2.  (1948).

Drrenmatt, Friedrich.  The Physicists.  (1962)  See main text.

Kingsley, Sidney.  Men in White.  (1933)  Prototypical ER that depicts a

hospital and doctors treating patients.   

Kipphardt, Heinar.  In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer .  (1964)  Documentary theatre based on the 1954 security clearance hearings by the Atomic Energy

Commission.

Lawrence, Jerome and Robert E. Lee.  Inherit the Wind. (1955)  About the

Scopes trial pitting Darwin's theory of evolution against the Bible.

Shaw, George Bernard, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906) Mocks medical charlatans but reflects understanding of the biochemistry under discussion.

Pre-twentieth century plays

Jonson, Ben.  The Alchemist.  (1610)

Marlowe, Christopher.  Dr. Faustus.  (1604 and 1616 versions)

von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust (part 1 1808, part 2 1831)

Ibsen, Henrik.  An Enemy of the People.  (1882)  Doctor discovers dangerous

bacteria in town spa waters, but instead of appreciation he meets townspeople's wrath as politics trumps science.

Musicals

The Electric Sunshine Man. (1978)  A musical about Thomas Edison.  Music by

John F. Wilson, words by Grace Hawthorne.

Imperfect Chemistry. (2000)  A musical comedy by Albert M. Tapper and James

Racheff.  Two geneticists at a philanthropic laboratory are seduced into

finding a cure for baldness.

Fermat's Last Tango.  (2000)  Pythagoras, Newton, Euclid, and Gauss are

characters in a mathematical musical by Joanne Sydney Lessner and Joshua

Rosenblaum

Quark Victory.  (2000)  A musical by Robert and Willie Reale in which a

young girl journeys through a sub-atomic world occupied by dancing electrons

and singing neutrinos.

Star Messengers.  (2001)  A quasi-opera by Paul Zimet and Ellen Meadow

which shows Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler interacting with three

harlequins from one of Galileo's books.

 *indicates sponsorship by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation