Contemporary “Science-in-theatre”: a rare genre**
By Carl Djerassi
Is
“science-in-theatre” a special genre or is the phrase itself a
contradiction in terms? To explain its use in my title, I shall start with my
definition of “science-in-fiction”—a literary form that I
have been exploring since the late 1980s and that eventually brought me to
“science-in-theatre.” Having now published four
“science-in-fiction” novels—all of them still in
print—I feel confident in offering a definition. For me, the most important
characteristic of “science-in-fiction” (in contrast to science
fiction) is that all the science and behavior of scientists described in it is
impeccably accurate or at least plausible. Why should that be important? I want
to use fiction to smuggle scientific facts into the consciousness of a
scientifically illiterate public—a pedagogic activity I consider
intellectually and socially beneficial, because the majority of scientifically
untrained persons are afraid of science. But for such pedagogic purposes,
accuracy and plausibility are essential. The moment many scientifically
illiterate persons learn that some scientific facts are about to be sprung on
them, they raise a mental shield. It is those people—the ascientific or
even antiscientific—that I wanted to touch through the medium of fiction.
Instead of starting with the aggressive preamble, “let me tell you about
my science,” I prefer to start with the more seductive “let me tell
you a story” and then incorporate real science and true-to-life scientists
into the tale. And if such a tale is presented on the stage rather than on the
printed page, we are dealing with “science-in-theatre.”
Open
admission of a desire for pedagogic smuggling immediately raises the warning
flag associated with the charged term “didactic.” The standard
dictionary definition of “didactic—“designed or intended
to teach”—sounds harmless
enough, and especially to a scientist, who after all is primed to write nothing
but didactic prose. But listen to the literati say the word and the pejorative
overtone is clear. “Didactic” is the sharpest stiletto in any
dismissive review of a work of fiction or drama. People do not pick up a novel
or go to the theatre to be educated, the professionals tell us—people go
to be entertained. But what Quintus Horatius Flaccus said some 2000 years ago
in his Ars Poetica: “Lectorem
delectando pariterque monendo” [delighting
the reader at the same time as instructing him] is also true today as shown by
the second definition of the word “didactic” in Webster’s
Dictionary: “intended to convey instruction and information, as well as pleasure and entertainment.” So what is wrong with learning something
while being entertained? Or from the playwright’s perspective, why not
use drama to smuggle important information generally not available on the stage
into the minds of a general public?
This
brings me to a further refinement of the term “science-in-theatre.”
For my purpose, it is not sufficient to simply insert here or there some
science into a play or have some characters that are not just Frankensteins,
Strangeloves or idiots savants. There are plays—admittedly few, but
important ones, and written by famous playwrights—that have scientific
thematic themes, yet I would not categorize them as pure “science-in-theatre.”
Four examples should suffice: Brecht’s “Life of Galileo,” Dürrenmatt’s “The
Physicists,” and
Stoppard’s “Hapgood”
and “Arcadia.”
Brecht’s
and Dürrenmatt’s motivation was primarily to express their
skepticism about science, the actual science playing a minimal role.
Brecht’s politics made him question any science that was not devoted to
the service of the people, while Dürrenmatt in expressing his fear of
atomic and nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War put his Newton,
Einstein and Möbius characters into an insane asylum, which became his
metaphor for the physicist’s world. Galileo, of course, illuminates also the conflict between
religion and science and the ultimately flawed natures of scientists and of men
of the cloth—topics that for me make that play much timelier in the year
2002 than The Physicists.
Skepticism
of contemporary science does not happen to be Stoppard’s motivation for
introducing scientific gems into a few of his plays. He has always shown a
healthy curiosity for the intellectual qualities of science and like other
non-scientist playwrights has used science for metaphorical purposes. I rather
doubt that his motivation in writing “Hapgood” was to illustrate Einstein’s
photoelectric effect or Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, both of which
are described at length by a physicist-turned spy, named Kerner. Here is a
brief excerpt from one of Kerner’s speeches:
“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 can pass
through two doors at the same time, or from one door to another by a path which
is there for all to see until someone looks, and then the act of looking has made
it take a different path. Its movements cannot be anticipated because it has no
reasons. 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: Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle; and this is not because you’re not looking carefully enough,
it is because there is no such thing as an electron with a definite position
and a definite momentum…”
Stoppard
was writing a fiendishly clever whodunit—not an explication of 20th
century physics—and he was neither the first nor the last to use
Heisenberg’s physics as metaphor, although using Einstein’s
photoelectric effect (which I will not quote) was more unusual.
That
leaves Arcadia. I am an enormous
fan of Stoppard’s plays, with Arcadia a close second to my personal favorite, Travesties. But is Arcadia “science-in-theatre”? Of course it has didactic sequences
dealing with science—some rather long. A description of Fermat’s
last theorem appears within the first few minutes of the play, right after a
long and hilarious definition of “carnal embrace.” Septimus Hodge,
the tutor, has this to say:
“Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is
the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for the
purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast,
asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the
sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.”
But
while Fermat reappears here and there for brief moments, it is iterated
algorithms and chaos theory that occupy the better part of a scene in Arcadia, with one monologue covering almost an entire page of
text. Some of it is quite straightforward:
“You
have some x- and y-equation. Any value for x gives you a value for y. So you
put a dot where it’s right for both x and y. Then you take the next value
for x which gives you another value for y, and when you’ve done that a
few times you join up the dots and that’s your graph of whatever the
equation is…. [But] what she’s doing is, every time she works out a
value for y, she’s using that as her next value for x. And so on. Like a
feedback. She’s feeding the solution back into the equation, and then
solving it again. Iteration, you see.”
Later
sequences become more complicated as they explain the use of such approaches to
contemporary population biology. I suspect that Stoppard’s real
motivation for many of his didactic forays was not to teach his theatre
audience about iterated algorithms. Rather, Arcadia had to do with nature and how we humans handle and
mishandle, or understand and misunderstand it. Listen to this sequence from the
same scene:
“People were talking about the end of
physics. Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the
whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the
very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The
ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—and
what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are
full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were for the Greeks.
We’re better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the
nucleus of an atom than whether it’ll rain on auntie’s garden party
three Sundays from now.”
A
few lines later appeared the punch line, “It’s the best possible
time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.” Somehow, coming from the pen of a
non-scientist of Stoppard’s renown, it has a more authentic and less
self-serving ring than if a professional scientist had written those words.
Still, I believe that the science in Stoppard’s plays—even the most
didactic sequences—are there because Stoppard decided to write a play for
which scientific concepts are useful and intellectually attractive metaphors.
But they are not intrinsic to the story. Arcadia could have been written without Fermat’s last
theorem or even without chaos theory as a literary lark around Lord Byron. It
would not have been the same play, but it still would have been performed and
most likely also acclaimed as a successful play.
While
none of the above-mentioned plays falls into my definition of pure
“science-in-theatre,” two recent ones (written by two first-class
playwrights lacking any sort of formal scientific credentials) do so, because
the very plot and rationale for those plays rest on scientists and their
science. Without them, there would be no play. Coincidentally, both first
opened at the Cottesloe Theatre of the NRT. Both contain healthy doses of
didacticism and in the process convincingly demonstrate that theatre with
didactic scientific elements is not invariably doomed to failure; that not all
audiences (as the New York Times critic
Bruce Weber once wrote) are so conditioned by low-brow entertainment that they
are only prepared to have their senses tickled, but not their brains massaged.
I
shall start with Stephen Poliakoff’s “Blinded by the Sun” (1996) in which he attempted to illuminate some of the
idiosyncratic aspects of a scientist’s drive for name recognition as well
as the competitive aspects of a collegial enterprise through a theatrical
version of the chemical “cold fusion” fiasco of the early 1990s. As
one of the characters states: “Water contains hydrogen. But how to get
it out? … Hydrogen, which will run planes, cars, anything you want. And
when you burn it, it will turn back into water. Polluting nothing.”
That’s
why the initial claims by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989 to having discovered
cold fusion had caused such a sensation among chemists and physicists and even
the general press. But on the following page in the play’s text,
scientific didacticism raised its ugly head:
ELINOR: Is it anatase or rutile? You haven’t used an adsorbed dye to shift the Lambda-max, clearly—
CHRISTOPHER: The particles have an electrodeposited
coating. It’s only a few nanometers thick so refractive index matching
makes it—
ELINOR: Yes, it certainly seems to have a high
quantum yield. Maybe there’s an added sulfonated surfactant to enhance
mass transport at the surface?
CHRISTOPHER: No. Think more of a catalytic
system—
To an audience equipped with more curiosity than
knowledge about science, such words constitute meaningless gobbledygook. Did
Poliakoff have his scientists speak these lines because he felt that a theatre
audience would not have understood the real chemistry? Or is the playwright,
dealing with serious science, faced by an intrinsic barrier unrelated to the
theatre?
Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen”
(1998) suggests that such pessimism is not always warranted. Or to put it
another way, that it depends on the science one wishes to illuminate. Chemistry
may be tougher than physics or astronomy or math because of its heavy
dependence on chemical structural formulae. Frayn displayed true courage by
refusing to concede to scientific illiteracy. He draws upon quantum mechanics
and the uncertainty principle for much of the scintillating interplay between
two Nobelists, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr with Margrethe Bohr playing the
role of the non-scientists at whose level the didactic passages had to be
pitched—a point made openly clear in the following comment of Bohr to
Heisenberg:
“You know how strongly I believe that we
don’t do science for ourselves, that we do it so we can explain it to
others… in plain language. Not your view I know—you’d be
happy to describe what you were up to purely in differential equations if you
could—but for Margrethe’s sake…”
Though enormously pleased for what the success of Copenhagen—a smash hit both in the West End and on
Broadway—has done for “science-in-theatre” and the sudden
attention that genre is now receiving, I am still surprised at the play’s
wide acceptance by commercial theatres to whom science is usually anathema.
That the author was an established playwright, known for his humor, undoubtedly
helped, although Copenhagen did
not contain a single line intended for a chuckle, let alone a belly laugh a la
“Noises Off.” I am absolutely convinced that if the
identical script were sent over the transom to London or Manhattan theatres by
an unknown playwright, it would not even have been read, let alone produced.
Pages of didactic exposition by two characters, where uncertainty in perception
and memory rather than dramatic excitement reigns, is not the stuff out which
hits are usually generated. I have to admit that I loved the play—and
seen it twice—at the Cottesloe and in the West End. But what about the
bulk of the audiences—the non-scientists? Do they accept such material in
the same spirit of snob appeal that made several million people buy copies of
Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time for display—mostly unread—on coffee
tables? And how would the average literary manager of a theatre respond if he
had happened on the following page of a script by an unknown playwright?
Heisenberg:
Max Born and Pascual Jordan in Göttingen.
Bohr: Yes,
but Schrödinger in Zürich, Fermi in Rome.
Heisenberg:
Chadwick and Dirac in England.
Bohr: Joliot
and de Broglie in Paris.
Heisenberg:
Gamow and Landau in Russia.
Bohr: You
remember when Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck did spin?
Heisenberg:
There’s this one last variable in the quantum state of the atom that
no one can make sense of. The last hurdle—
Bohr: Pauli
and Stern are waiting on the platform to ask me what I think about spin.
Heisenberg:
Then the train pulls into Leiden.
Bohr: And
I’m met at the barrier by Einstein and Ehrenfest.
I readily admit that it is unfair to quote any passage
from a play out of context, but the above may well represent a world record for
the number of different surnames—sixteen in all—appearing within a
single page of a play. Frayn’s presumed justification—which I
applaud—was didactic realism rather than the euphony created by this
potpourri of European surnames, many of them familiar only to physicists. To my
knowledge, Copenhagen received
uniformly complimentary reviews and commentary with one exception: a serious
critique by an American historian, Paul L. Rose, the author of a recent book
entitled “Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project.” In his lengthy piece in the Chronicle of
Higher Education, Rose compliments
Frayn on the theatrical aspects of Copenhagen, but chastises him severely on a major didactic
point. Not on quantum physics and complimentarity, but on the revisionist
nature of Frayn’s interpretation of Heisenberg’s role in the
putative German atomic fission project. This is a serious point, because it was
this historic aspect of Copenhagen
that represented the dramatic focus of the play. I will not further dwell on
Rose’s criticism other than to mention that for didacticism to work in a
play or a piece of fiction, it ought to be accurate. Of course, scientific and
historical accuracy are two different things. Frayn anticipated this argument,
which is also the reason why the published text of the play contains a densely
written authorial postscript defending his interpretation of the historical
record. The very recent unsealing of some of Bohr’s papers only
complicates the issue further.
Whether “pure” science-in-theatre”
plays will become more common fare among serious theatres or be limited to
occasional forays by famous playwrights remains to be seen. Jean-Noël
Fenwick’s play, Les Palmes de M. Schutz—antedating Poliakoff’s and Frayn’s
plays by several years—deals with Marie and Pierre Curie’s
discovery of radium. It is staged in its entirety in a realistic replica of a
laboratory and went way beyond a success d’estime in France to be turned eventually into a film. The
Italian title of the play, Amore e Chimica, though kitschy, even dared to bring the word “chemistry”
into the title. Yet to my knowledge, the play has not yet been presented in
English even though more than a decade has passed since its French premiere.
This
brings me to an American example, “QED,” a theatrical attempt by Peter Parnell to depict on
stage Richard Feynman, one of the greatest 20th century physicists.
“QED” opened to great
acclaim in 2001 in Los Angeles and proved equally successful upon its transfer
to Lincoln Center in New York. Parnell and his director Gordon Davidson surely
would consider “QED”—very professionally played by Alan
Alda—pure “science-in-theatre,” but to me it was at best an
entertaining farce—an example par excellence of a
non-scientist author parodying for a dumbed-down audience his view of the
speech and behavior of scientists. While in real life, Feynman did play bongo
drums and did enjoy women, his enduring fame as an inspired teacher and Nobel
Prize winning physicist rested on other qualities. As stated succinctly by
Horace Freeland Judson in his review of the play in NATURE (410, 634 (2001)), “Actor, playwright,
director—in this piece of theatre they have conspired to keep us from
Feynman’s intelligence. We get 40 seconds of a Feynman diagram scrawled
on that blackboard as a gee-whiz illustration…. Instead of
Feynman’s speed of comprehension we get frenetic, fussy movement.” The playwright’s and director’s fear of
even a whiff of didacticism as the price for scientific realism and accuracy
may have produced commercially successful theatre, but not
“science-in-theatre” as defined by me.
My
undisguised irritation with “QED” is associated with my personal belief that scientists operate
within a tribal culture whose rules, mores and idiosyncrasies are generally not
communicated through specific lectures or books, but through a form of
intellectual osmosis via a mentor-disciple relationship. As we learn to cope
with the constant jockeying with colleagues and competitors over position and
priorities, the order of the authors, the choice of the journal, the quest for
the grail of academic tenure—even Nobel lust, that most exalted failing
of the great—we learn how the game is played by people in white coats,
speaking an impenetrable jargon, but people all the same. To me it is important
that the public does not look at scientists primarily as nerds or Strangeloves
or—as in “QED”—as
a special species of clown. And because true “science-in-theatre”
deals not only with real science but also with real scientists, I feel that a
clansman can best describe a scientist’s tribal culture and idiosyncratic
behavior. But while science is inherently dramatic, dealing as it does with the
new and unexpected, are scientists dramatic personae—an indispensable
criterion for a successful play? Or do our idiosyncratic traits as scientists
appear so queer or dull to the rest of the world that we will never appear in
successful plays unless represented in the extreme as was the case with QED? Is it here that a scientist-turned-author can play a
constructive role?
To
write “science-in-theatre” does not require that the author be a
scientist. All the plays I have mentioned so far were written by
internationally recognized playwrights, who had gained their scientific
knowledge second- or perhaps even third-hand. Still, why is it that so few
“hard” scientists—and no chemists at all, as far as I am
aware—have become recognized playwrights, whereas some physicians have made
major contributions? Consider Anton Chekov or Arthur Schnitzler, for instance.
Is it because chemists find it difficult to communicate without recourse to
blackboard or slides or some other kind of pictogram? Or is it because chemists
deal primarily with abstractions at the molecular level, whereas physicians
spend their days listening to the stories of other human beings? Even the most
scientifically-invested plays succeed, if they do, because they work at the
human level. Or is it that all formal written discourse of scientists is always
monologist, whereas the theatre is the realm of dialogue?
Perhaps
none of those generalizations is the reason, yet it is that last one that
tempts me the most, especially when I consider my own forays on the stage.
Having talked at length about some of the masters of science-in-theatre, let me
end with a long established scientist but only recently produced playwright,
Carl Djerassi. In contrast to the professional playwrights l have cited so far,
who mostly want to use science for their theatrical aims, I started from the
opposite side, using the stage for my scientific missionary purpose. But even
though we start at opposite ends, for any play to work, we must meet in the
middle: on the stage facing a live audience that did not come to be educated,
but rather entertained. The topic I picked first was a biological one: the
future of human reproduction. And to make my point, I turned to some recent,
cutting-edge research in reproductive biology. Everyone can personally
associate in one way or another with reproduction and sex; everyone has
opinions about the subject; and most people of theatre-going age are convinced
that they know the facts of reproductive life. To show how wrong they can be, I
present below an excerpt from my first play, An Immaculate Misconception, whose sub-title was “Sex in an Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”—an
allusion to Walter Benjamin’s famous essay of 1936 on “Art in an
Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
I chose it because I consider the impending separation of sex (in bed) and
fertilization (under the microscope) one of the fundamental issues facing
humanity during the coming century. I picked Benjamin’s phrase for a
second reason as well: in our preoccupation to conceive, we often forget the
product of all the technologies we utilize, namely the resulting child.
Benjamin argues, “The technique of reproduction detaches the
reproduced object from the domain of tradition.” All the reader has to do is to substitute
“child” for “reproduced
object” in order to land right
in the middle of the ethical thicket that reproductive technologists invariably
face: they support heroic efforts by many couples to overcome certain
biological hurdles that may very well harm rather than benefit the
“reproduced object.”
For the didactic component
of that play, I chose the most ethically charged reproductive technology of
them all, ICSI. But to appreciate the impetus for this new
technology—only 11 years old, but already responsible for the birth of
close to 100,000 babies—the public must understand the facts of
reproductive life. But do they really? I would offer odds that few in an
average theatre audience could answer correctly the following question: While
it takes only a single sperm to fertilize an egg, how many sperm must a man
ejaculate in order to be fertile? Answer: a fertile man ejaculates on the order
of 100 million sperm during intercourse; a man ejaculating 1 – 3 million
sperm—seemingly still a huge number—is functionally infertile. Ten
years ago, there was no hope for such men. But now, many can become fathers
because of ICSI. Yet how many members of the theatre audience I wish to attract
have heard of ICSI or know that it is an acronym standing for
“intracytoplasmic sperm injection” whatever that phrase may mean to
them?
So
assume that you have innocently purchased a theatre ticket for “An
Immaculate Misconception”—perhaps
because of the catchy title—without having any idea that the playwright
wants to instruct as well as entertain. The ICSI procedure, though conducted
under the microscope, is usually watched in real life in the laboratory on a
video monitor connected to the microscope. In my Immaculate Misconception, the scene excerpted below is played out in front of
the audience by projecting a real ICSI procedure on a large rear screen
accompanied by the following dialog between the biologist, Dr. Melanie Laidlaw
(conducting the first ICSI procedure in history) and Dr. Felix Frankenthaler,
her clinical colleague, who will eventually transfer the fertilized egg back
into the woman’s uterus.
MELANIE (Puts
on rubber gloves): Would you start
the VCR?
FELIX: Sure. (Pushes the button and turns toward the
monitor so that only part of his face is seen. Both are completely silent as
the screen lights up. MELANIE is hunched over the microscope, both hands
manipulating the joysticks on each side of the microscope. She sits so as to be
able to coordinate her words to action on the screen). Ah…
here we are.
MELANIE (As single active sperm appears at bottom of
image, excitedly interrupts): Okay…
let’s see whether I can catch it with this capillary, one-tenth as thick
as a human hair. But first I’ve got to crush its tail so the sperm
can’t get away…. (Quickly moves pipette toward sperm and sounds
jubilant as the injection pipette crushes the sperm’s tail) Gotcha!
FELIX:
Not bad. Not bad at all.
MELANIE: Now comes the tricky part. I’ve got to
aspirate it tail first…. As soon as I get close enough, just a little
suction will do the trick…. Hah! Gotcha! (Screen image displays the sperm, tail first, being sucked
into the pipette. Image now shows MELANIE “playing” the
sperm’s head by moving it back and forward to demonstrate that she can
manipulate it easily).
FELIX:
Quit playing with him!
MELANIE: I’m not playing with it. I just want to be
sure that I can manipulate it at will. And why do you always call sperm “him”?
Is it because the sex of a baby is always determined by the sperm? (Silence
for a few seconds.) Here we are. (Image
of egg appears). Isn’t she
a beauty? Just look at her… here you are my precious baby… now stay
still while I arrange you a bit… while I clasp you on my suction
pipette… polar body on top….
like a little head. I want it in the 12 o’clock position. (Egg
on screen is now immobilized in precisely the desired position for the penetration).
Felix, now cross your fingers. (He
leans forward, clearly fascinated. Injection pipette containing sperm appears
on image but pipette remains immobile.)
FELIX (Points to pipette on extreme right of image): What’s the problem? It isn’t usually
that difficult.
MELANIE: No … (Pause, while image on screen shows
injection pipette now aligned exactly in 3 o’clock position with respect
to egg) but to do it with this
sperm into… this…(does not finish the sentence as pipette
penetrates the egg. MELANIE lets out audible gasp of relief).
FELIX (Makes
sudden start, as if he had been pricked):
My God! You did it! Beautiful penetration! (Image shows pipette resting
within egg). Now shoot him out! (Points
to sperm head in pipette)
MELANIE: Here we go. (Image shows sperm head at the very
end of the injection pipette. She aspirates it back and gives it a second
push). Ah, that’s a good boy. (Carefully
withdraws pipette without apparent damage to the egg).
FELIX: You did it! Look at him, just look at him! Sitting
in there. (Approaches image and points to sperm head on screen. Calmer voice). It’s amazing. That egg looks… what shall I say?…
inviolate, almost virginal.
MELANIE (Looks up for first time from microscope): It better not be... (Mimics his voice with a
slightly sarcastic edge) “inviolate”,
to use your precious term… I
violated it very consciously and tomorrow, I want to see cell division…
Felix (points to VCR), press the
pause button, will you? (He does and image of fertilized egg remains frozen
on screen in full view).
FELIX: So
who is the father?
MELANIE:
There isn’t any father in the usual sense of the word.
FELIX (Ironic): An immaculate conception?
MELANIE: You know, in a way that’s true. There was no
penetration of the woman, no sexual contact. In fact, at that moment, there was
no woman, no vagina… nor a man (pause)…. The only prick (pause)… was the gentle one by a tiny needle entering
an egg in a dish, delivering a single sperm. (Laughs). Even that prick was provided by a woman. That
process means nothing until the egg is implanted into the woman.
FELIX:
And who is this woman? Whose eggs were you injecting?
MELANIE:
Mine!
The vast majority of the public coming to my play will
never have heard of ICSI, yet I can state unequivocally—based on my
experience with theatre audiences in Edinburgh, London, San Francisco, Vienna,
Munich, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, Sofia, Geneva, Seoul, Tokyo and very
soon in Lisbon—that after having seen my play everyone will not only know
what ICSI is, but will also be able to explain it. And if that claim is true,
then this “science-in-theatre” has indeed fulfilled a valuable
pedagogic purpose, because if you understand the technology, you are in a
position to ask intelligent questions dealing with the ethics of such a
fundamental change in human reproductive capability.
The
relatively rapid acceptance of my first play in 9 languages can in large part
be ascribed to the timeliness of the topic and the inherently dramatic aspects
of human reproduction that in An Immaculate Misconception were presented so graphically—a feature
commented upon by many reviewers. But as a chemist turning into a playwright,
it behooved me to see whether chemistry can be presented as effectively on the
stage as, say, sex or human reproductive biology. I had the good fortune to
find a partner, Roald Hoffmann, interested in joining me in such a theatrical
experiment (even though he is a theoretician by profession, rather than
experimentalist). In 1981, while Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University,
he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theoretical chemical
insights. But unlike most chemists, he has been interested for years in
communicating with a broader public, and has done so through his own poetry and
non-fiction writing.
Just
as I tried in my first play to hide my didactic motivations behind the scrim of
sex, in the second play, Oxygen, Hoffmann
and I did this by taking up a theme—the Nobel Prize—that, at least
to scientists, is potentially also sexy. The year 2001 was the centenary of the
Nobel Prize; it is also the year in which our play is set. In Oxygen, the Nobel Foundation decides to celebrate the
centenary by establishing a new Nobel Prize as described by two members of the
Nobel Committee for Chemistry, Professors Bengt Hjalmarsson and Sune
Kallstenius, who are on stage in private conversation.
SUNE
KALLSTENIUS: A Retro-Nobel for work
done before 1901. What a way of celebrating the centenary of the Nobel
Prizes…
BENGT
HJALMARSSON: At least the losers won’t
be able to hold it against us.
SUNE
KALLSTENIUS: It’s different I
suppose… recognizing dead people.
BENGT
HJALMARSSON: It’s still too
much work.
SUNE
KALLSTENIUS: You always complain
about the time spent on Nobel Committee business. Most Swedes would be proud to
pay the price.
BENGT
HJALMARSSON: You pay. I’m tired
of paying it. My work suffers.
SUNE
KALLSTENIUS: So resign.
BENGT
HJALMARSSON (Grins): Not a chance. I like the power… and the gossip.
But choosing a dead winner? They don’t even re-pay favors.
SUNE
KALLSTENIUS: You don’t mean
that?
BENGT
HJALMARSSON: I’m just being
honest.
SUNE
KALLSTENIUS: Honesty has its
place… but this isn’t it!
Our play attempts to deal with two fundamental
questions: what is discovery in science and why is it so important for a
scientist to be first? To put it even more crudely, why do the scientific
Olympics only award gold medals and no silvers or bronzes? Why is it that in
science, being second might as well be last? And yet, why in the end is it even
more important to be recognized last? In Oxygen, we approach these questions as our imaginary
retro-Nobel Committee meets to select, first, the discovery that should be so
honored, and then—as it turns out, not a straightforward
question—which scientist to credit for it. Throughout the play, as the
retro-Nobel Committee debates its selection, the audience learns about the
three leading candidates through their wives in a trialogue that occurs in a
Swedish sauna in 1777 just prior to a royal adjudication concerning the
respective claims of their husbands: the Swedish apothecary Carl Wilhelm
Scheele, who made oxygen first; the English minister-turned-chemist, Joseph
Priestley, who published first; and the French chemist, tax collector,
economist, and public servant, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, who understood first
the revolutionary implications of this gas’s existence. In switching back
and forth between 2001 and 1777, not unlike the time shifts in Stoppard’s
“Arcadia,” we present
the historical and personal record that leads the Nobel Committee to its final
conclusion. Here is a brief excerpt from a 1777 scene in which Mrs. Priestley
is shaving her husband, who is sitting in a chair, face lathered.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: Why face him?
PRIESTLEY: It’s complicated… but I must.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: To prove you told him?
PRIESTLEY: To show I was first.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: And Scheele?
PRIESTLEY: I trust him.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: He claims priority.
PRIESTLEY: He did not publish.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: Yet wasn’t he first?
PRIESTLEY: Perhaps.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: But that would make you
second.
PRIESTLEY: It would make Lavoisier third.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: Is that the point? That he
was last.
PRIESTLEY: Indeed.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: Why?
PRIESTLEY: Have the world bow to him? (Pause). When I preceded him?
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: If you were King
Gustav—
PRIESTLEY: God forbid!
MRS.
PRIESTLEY (Persists): Still… if you were King… whom would you
pick?
PRIESTLEY: I’d ask… whom would the world choose?
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: Joseph! Answer me…
as my husband… not as a clever minister.
PRIESTLEY: You’ve always wanted black and white answers.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: This question deserves it.
PRIESTLEY: Deserving something does not always lead to getting
it.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: You’re not in a
pulpit.
PRIESTLEY (Tired):
I published first… which makes me first in the world’s eyes.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: I meant the heart…
not the eyes.
PRIESTLEY: The world has no heart.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: But you do…
you’ve often opened it to me.
PRIESTLEY: You’re a clever woman, Mary.
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: No… this is your
loving wife asking.
PRIESTLEY: Before we came to Stockholm, I was convinced…
in my heart and mind… that I was first. (Pause). But now?
MRS.
PRIESTLEY: I understand, Joseph.
The main theme of “Oxygen” is that behaviorally speaking, little has
changed over the course of two centuries in the motivation and conduct of
scientists in their drive for recognition and priority as underlined in the
following scene between Prof. Astrid Rosenqvist, the chair of the Retro Nobel
Committee, and Ulla Zorn, a young History of Science student and the
Committee’s secretary.
That themes like the above cited ones are not
necessarily esoteric aspects of a tribal culture that cannot possibly be of
interest to a general public, was demonstrated by the fact that both BBC and
the West German Broadcasting Corporation found both science-in-theatre plays
suitable for broadcast to wide audiences—in the case of the BBC over its
World Service. Sine its premiere in 2001, “Oxygen” has been translated into 10 languages and
already published in book form in 7 of them. And since I consider most
scientists’ overriding desire for priority and name recognition both the
nourishment and the poison of the scientific research enterprise, I decided to
dedicate the last play (“Calculus”) in my
“science-in-theatre” trilogy to this aspect in the life of one of
the greatest scientists of the past 500 years, Isaac Newton. Here is an
excerpted dialogue from “Calculus” between John Arbuthnot (a Fellow of the Royal Society during
Newton’s time as well as physician to Queen Anne) and his wife:
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Well?
ARBUTHNOT: It’s done.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Who was there?
ARBUTHNOT: All eleven.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: No one else?
ARBUTHNOT: Newton.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: That I expected… but
who else?
ARBUTHNOT: No one.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: That was clever.
ARBUTHNOT: Newton is clever… but also cautious. Why
invite unnecessary witnesses?
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: What about other
supporters? The kind Bernoulli called “Newton’s servile
sycophants.”
ARBUTHNOT: The Committee is already inundated with them.
Besides, he called them “Newton’s toadies.”
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Hardly more complimentary.
But would it not have been more politic to include in the Committee some
Fellows less beholden?
ARBUTHNOT: There were a few.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Bonet?
ARBUTHNOT: He’s one.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: And you.
ARBUTHNOT (Tired nod):
And I.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT (Impatient): Tell me what happened.
ARBUTHNOT: I started out on the wrong foot.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: You mean with honesty?
ARBUTHNOT (Nods):
Does truth not bear the same relation to understanding as music does to the ear
or beauty to the eye?
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Newton is concerned with
understanding the universe. That truth concerns him… but no other music
reaches his ear. I had warned you, John. (Reaches over to pat his hand or
other gesture of affection). What did
you say?
ARBUTHNOT: I quoted Francis Bacon: “There is little
friendship in the world… and least of all between equals.”
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: And?
ARBUTHNOT: He stopped me.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: What did he say?
ARBUTHNOT: Nothing.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: But you said he stopped
you.
ARBUTHNOT: He pointed to Hill.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Why Abraham Hill?
ARBUTHNOT: He’s the oldest… almost eighty.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT (Dismissive): And one of the toadies.
ARBUTHNOT (Tired):
Not any more than most of us.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT: And what did the oldest toady say?
ARBUTHNOT: That the Committee’s concern was with
superiority… not equality… of British science. Considerations of
friendship were irrelevant. Newton and Leibniz were only surrogates.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: He said that… in
front of Newton?
ARBUTHNOT: He didn’t have to… most
understood… though perhaps not Bonet.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: And that was it? (Not
getting any response she continues more exasperated). John! I’ve never had to push you like this.
Do you not trust me?
ARBUTHNOT: It’s a matter of shame… not trust.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT (Warmer): Then confide in your wife.
ARBUTHNOT: I could not help but think of John Flamsteed—
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: You are no friend of
his…
ARBUTHNOT: Nor his enemy.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Even after you
demanded… on behalf of Newton… that Flamsteed deliver his
life’s work—his lunar tables—to his bitterest enemy?
ARBUTHNOT: I did that at her Majesty’s command—
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: After furious prompting by
Newton. He used you, John!
ARBUTHNOT: In your eyes he probably did.
MRS.
ARBUTHNOT: Newton hates
Flamsteed… in spite of his position as Astronomer Royal.
ARBUTHNOT: In spite… and because of it. Though hardly a justification to have the Astronomer Royal ejected from Fellowship of the Royal Society for late payment of