February 2, 2024: Cissy Patterson Lecture Series
Contact: Pierre Clare
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Title: Turning Theorems into Plays
Abstract: The plot of Arcadia, Tom Stoppard’s highly acclaimed play from 1993, winds through Fermat’s Last Theorem, chaos theory, fractal geometry, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Five years later, Michael Frayn’s award-winning play Copenhagen brought its audience face to face with quantum uncertainty. The success of these high-profile examples became a catalyst for other adventurous playwrights to look to mathematics, and science more generally, for artistic inspiration. We will take a guided tour of a handful of these plays from recent decades to experience first-hand how Stoppard, Frayn, Simon McBurney and others transported the power of abstract mathematics onto the human stage.
