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from the dept. Last Saturday I went out with some friends to see the play Cophenhagen, which was just finishing up a successful run at the Winter Garden theatre here in Toronto. What was interesting was to sit down to watch a play about two physicists arguing over quantum mechanics--and discover that even at the end of the run, the theatre was packed. Or maybe it's not so surprising. The play, which is by Michael Frayn (and starred Michael Ball, Martha Henry and Jim Mezon in the Toronto production) deals with issues that hang over all of our heads: the Bomb, the responsibility of scientists, the experience of watching great discoveries be twisted for evil purposes. The story revolves around an historical and mysterious visit that Werner Heisenberg made to his long-time mentor and friend, Niels Bohr, in 1941, in Copenhagen. The meeting was brief, and whatever was said or done in those few minutes destroyed a deep friendship that had lasted since the twenties. More significantly, it may have been one of those obscure hinge-points of history: did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen to try to recruit Bohr into the German nuclear bomb program? Or did he come to warn him? Much of the drama of the play comes from watching these two men come to understand that their lifelong passion of theoretical physics has suddenly become a matter of life and death for potentially the entire human race. (There's a beautiful moment when Heisenberg says, "It's like somebody takes the little cap-gun that you've been playing with away from you and turns it on the crowd and suddenly there's blood everywhere...") Also interesting is that throughout the play there's a lot of discussion of physics--to the point that the actors apparently had to take a crash-course in quantum mechanics in order to prepare for their roles. The ideas and metaphors of QM permeate the play, and I was interested to see how the (mainstream and average) audience accepted and enjoyed them. I'm not suggesting that science and art haven't successfully blended many times in the past, or that ordinary people haven't always had a fascination for these people and the times they lived in. But it all seems so much more accessible now... definitely like part of the cultural mainstream. Can it be related to the fact that 8 out of the 10 top-grossing movies of all time were science fiction or fantasy films? In any case, Copenhagen is a delightful play and if it comes your way, run right out and see it. < | >
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"Even if I should learn that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant this apple tree today." -- Martin Luther | |
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