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Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to [email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and other rightsholders Science as Theater From physics to biology, science is offering playwrights innovative ways of exploring the intersections of science, history, art and modern life Harry Lustig and Kirsten Shepherd-Barr Two thousand million people in the world, hope for a “third culture” of art that would “be and the one who has to decide their fate is the on speaking terms with the scientific one.” A only one who’s always hidden from me….. number of recent science plays show how ef- fective this conversation can be, and suggest n a bare stage, actor Hank Stratton, playing that the “third culture” that Snow envisioned Othe role of Werner Heisenberg in Michael may actually be arriving in the intersection be- Frayn’s acclaimed play Copenhagen, muses on tween science and the theater. the impossibility of self-knowledge. The fiction- al Heisenberg is agonizing over his role in the Anxiety and Distrust Nazi effort to build an atomic bomb and finds “Science plays” have a long history and a dis- himself unsure of his own motivations. tinguished provenance, starting with Christo- For four years on the London stage, two pher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, published in 1604. years on Broadway, and in cities across Europe Although it does not deal with specific scien- and America, Copenhagen has defied the con- tific concepts, the play features a scientist who Harry Lustig is an emeritus pro- ventional wisdom that science and art cannot strikes a bargain with the Devil and meets a fessor of physics and Provost co-exist. Despite or perhaps because of its heady horrible demise as a result of his lust for Emeritus at City College of the mix of quantum physics and moral dilemmas, it knowledge. City University of New York. His has been popular with critics and audiences Marlowe’s distrust of the motives of scien- Ph.D. is in theoretical nuclear alike; it won the Tony Award for Best New Play tists set the tone for many future plays in the physics, and his research ranges in 2000 and was filmed for presentation this fall genre. Other playwrights expressed this dis- from the theory of nuclear reac- to U.S. public-television audiences. As New York trust in more comedic form. Ben Jonson’s The tions to the history of physics. Be- Times critic Ben Brantley put it, “Who would Alchemist (1610) lampooned both the practi- tween 2000 and 2002, with Brian B. Schwartz, he organized and have ever thought that three dead, long-winded tioners of this ancient pseudo-science, un- produced three symposia on the people talking about atomic physics would be masked by Jonson as jargon-babbling rogues, play Copenhagen in New York such electrifying companions?” and their willing dupes. When Jonson’s sly al- City, Washington and Albu- Yet the success of Copenhagen has not been chemist, Subtle, quizzes his accomplice, Face, querque, New Mexico. This arti- an isolated phenomenon. In recent years, sci- Jonson has great fun with the terminology of cle is based in part on a talk he ence has become a surprisingly popular subject Renaissance science: gave at the 2002 Annual Meet- for playwrights. According to our best count, Subtle. Name the vexations, and the ing of the American Physical So- more than 20 plays on a scientific theme have martyrisations ciety. Kirsten Shepherd-Barr is opened in a professional production over the Of metals, in the work. an associate professor of English last five years, although none has yet matched at North Carolina State Univer- sity in Raleigh, specializing in Copenhagen’s popular success. At the very least, Face. Sir, putrefaction, modern drama and theater histo- science is in vogue on stage as it has never been Solution, ablution, sublimation, ry. She co-organized a Raleigh before. The best of these plays go far beyond Cohobation, calcinations, symposium on Copenhagen in using science as an ornament or a plot device. ceration and March, organized a “Science on They seriously embrace scientific ideas and Fixation. Stage” panel at the 2001 Sigma grapple with their implications. In an era when Subtle. This is heathen Greek, Xi Forum and is currently on traditional dramatic subjects such as dysfunc- to you, now? leave in England writing a book tional families have become tired, playwrights And when comes vivification? about science and theater. Ad- have found the lives and discoveries of real sci- dress for Lustig: 304 Chula Vista entists to be full of dramatic possibilities and Face. After mortification. Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501. In- ternet: [email protected]. For Shep- thought-provoking metaphors. herd-Barr: Department of Eng- In his famous 1959 essay on “the two cul- Later, George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s lish, Box 8105, NCSU, Raleigh, tures,” C. P. Snow lamented the widening gulf Dilemma (1906) made fun of a passel of medical NC 27695-8105. Internet: between science on one side and the arts and charlatans with such famous lines as “Stimu- [email protected] humanities on the other, and expressed his late the phagocytes!” But the play also shows © 2002 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 550 American Scientist, Volume 90 with permission only. Contact [email protected]. Figure 1. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen has been the bellwether of a flock of new science plays in recent years. In this publicity photograph from the touring production, Hank Stratton (center) as Werner Heisenberg addresses Len Cariou (right) as Niels Bohr, while Mariette Hartley (left) as Margrethe Bohr listens. In actual performances, spectators have occupied the stalls behind the actors, creating the impression of a tribunal. (Pho- tograph by Joan Marcus, courtesy of Broadway in Boston/Clear Channel Entertainment.) that Shaw has genuinely investigated the bio- hearings of the Atomic Energy Commission chemistry that the doctors discuss. and contemporary news sources. Davis leaves Science on Stage Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo, with its portrayal of the fate of the Earth in the audience’s hands, actual scientists in historical situations, marked a pleading with us to choose the right path in Contemporary Plays turning point in the history of scientific plays. In our use of atomic energy. a version of the play published in 1939 (but not After Darwin (1998) translated, and therefore not widely known), Memory and Duality Timberlake Wertenbaker Brecht took a very positive view of his protago- Even as they retain some elements of skepticism nist; but in later revisions, which were strongly toward science, contemporary science plays ex- Arcadia (1993), Galileo influenced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he por- plore a broader range of attitudes and, as in (1970, unpublished), 2 Hapgood (1988) trayed Galileo as an antihero. The revised play, E = mc , have frequently drawn their themes Tom Stoppard published in 1947, is the Brecht Galileo most from science itself. No play illustrates this better widely used and read around the world. than the masterpiece of the genre, Copenhagen. Blinded by the Sun Several other playwrights also saw the Michael Frayn’s play, familiar by now to (1996) bomb in Faustian terms. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, many American Scientist readers, re-enacts the Stephen Poliakoff in The Physicists (1962), warned of the apoca- 1941 visit of Werner Heisenberg to his mentor lyptic results of modern physics put into the and friend Niels Bohr, in Nazi-occupied Den- Calabi Yau (2002) wrong hands. The play uses the Möbius strip mark. The third “long-winded” character is Susanna Speier as a central image and is one of the first mod- Bohr’s wife Margrethe, who in this play (al- ern plays to integrate science formally as well though probably not in reality) was present for Copenhagen (1998; 2000) (Also a PBS Hollywood as thematically. Another remarkable science the first part of the conversation. The action Presents film.) play that warns of the dangerous potential of takes place outside chronological time, as the Michael Frayn physics, while actually discussing scientific three deceased characters struggle, with the ideas, is Hallie Flanagan Davis’s E = mc 2 (1948). hindsight of 60 years of history, to make sense The Division of Memory This play is part allegory and part documen- of what happened that afternoon. (2001) tary, as it features a character called Atom and From 1939 until Germany’s defeat in 1945, Clarinda Mac Low, a Professor who explains the physics that the Heisenberg was in charge of the most impor- James Hannaham and audience needs to know. Much of the play’s tant part of the country’s uranium project. As a Tanya Barfield dialogue is taken directly from transcripts of result of the visit to Copenhagen, the friendship © 2002 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 2002 November–December 551 with permission only. Contact [email protected]. to make the chain long enough for a large explosion… Heisenberg. Eighty generations, let’s say… Bohr. … you would need many tons of it. And it’s extremely difficult to separate. Heisenberg. Tantalisingly difficult. Bohr. Mercifully difficult. The best esti- mates, when I was in America in 1939, were that to produce even one gram of U- 235 would take 26,000 years. By which time, surely, this war will be over. Later we find out what they had missed: Heisenberg. Because you’d always been confident that weapons would need 235 and that we could never separate enough of it.