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The Adding Machine (1923) |
 | Elmer Rice |
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This highly symbolic play tells the life, death, afterlife, and
rebirth of Zero, a mild-mannered nobody who is hoping to get a raise
for twenty five years of loyal service as a clerk doing addition... (more) |
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Albert's Bridge (1967) |
 | Tom Stoppard |
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A radio play about a philosophy graduate student who gets a job painting the Clufton Bay Bridge. It takes him and three other workers exactly two years to paint the entire bridge, at which time they must... (more) |
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Arcadia (1993) |
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| Tom Stoppard |
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Stoppard's critically successful play includes long discussions of topics of
mathematical interest including: Fermat's Last Theorem and Newtonian
determinism, iterated algorithms, the second law of thermodynamics,
Fourier's... (more) |
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Archimedes, a planetarium opera (2007) |
|
| James Dashow |
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Opera, as in people singing and music playing, and not the
usual Latin for "works".
James Dashow has been scripting, composing, and recording
Archimedes, a "planetarium opera" for the past ten years.
It's... (more) |
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Art Thou Mathematics? (1978) |
|
| Charles Mobbs |
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Short story (Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, October 1978 Vol. 98 No 10) concerning the very nature of mathematical discovery. It was later rewritten in the form of a play, which the author has... (more) |
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Back to Methuselah (1921) |
|
| George Bernard Shaw |
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In this not-very-stageable play in five parts, Shaw expounds on
mankind and the theory of evolution, from Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden to a paradise world 30,000 years in the future.
It turns... (more) |
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The Birds (BC414) |
|
| Aristophanes |
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In one scene of this classic Greek play, the geometer Meton appears
and...well, it's pretty short. So why should I summarize it when I can
simply reproduce it here!
(Enter
METON, With surveying... (more) |
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The Blue Door (2006) |
|
| Tanya Barfield |
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A successful African-American mathematics professor who has tried to ignore racism and its implications for his life is visited by his ancestors during a sleepless night in this critically acclaimed new... (more) |
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Breaking the Code (1986) |
|
| Hugh Whitemore (playwright) |
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This biography of Alan Turing is a "character study" of this
fascinating mathematician. Although we do see some mathematics (including
an especially nice description of Gödel's Theorem and its mathematical
significance)... (more) |
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Calculus (Newton's Whores) (2004) |
|
| Carl Djerassi |
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The credit for the invention of calculus has long been contested, being claimed by both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. A committee established by the Royal Society in 1712 concluded that Newton was... (more) |
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Delicious Rivers (2006) |
|
| Ellen Maddow |
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This collage of absurd and entertaining scenes at a NYC post office (and the music and choreography to which they are performed) were all inspired by the mathematics of Penrose Tilings. In particular,... (more) |
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A Disappearing Number (2007) |
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| Simon McBurney |
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One of the storylines of McBurney's A Disappearing Number written for his experimental theater troupe, "Complicite", concerns Srinivasa Ramanujan's collaboration with G.H. Hardy. Another focuses on a modern... (more) |
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The Exception (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
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Written in the form of a dialogue between a man in a nursing home and his grandchild, this short story describes an undergraduate research project that produces a surprising answer to one of the most famous... (more) |
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Fermat's Last Tango (2000) |
|
| Joanne Sydney Lessner / Joshua Rosenblum |
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Fermat's Last Tango is an intelligently written, hilarious fantasia
based on Andrew Wiles' 1993 proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The main plot consists of a love triangle between Daniel
Keane... (more) |
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The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem (2000) |
|
| Rinne Groff |
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I think this play about a number theory conference at the British seaside at the turn of the 20th century may be misunderstood. The plot revolves around the neuroses of the senior researcher, Moses Vazsonyi,... (more) |
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Galileo (1938) |
|
| Bertolt Brecht |
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Of course, Brecht's biographical play takes more of a political than a mathematical view of the life of the famous astronomer/mathematician. Note that Joseph Losey, who directed the first American production... (more) |
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God and Stephen Hawking (2000) |
|
| Robin Hawdon |
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Although most people know him as a "scientist", Stephen Hawking is probably the best known living mathematician. (Technically, he is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.) This play examines his life and work.
(more) |
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Hapgood (1988) |
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| Tom Stoppard |
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A brief discussion of Euler's solution to the Königsburg Bridge Problem appears in Stoppard's play about espionage and quantum physics.
When a British physicist double-agent is accused of giving... (more) |
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Hypatia (2000) |
|
| Mac Wellman |
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Artistically produced off-Broadway play about the famous female
mathematician who was tortured to death by Christian monks in the 5th
Century. (more) |
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In Good King Charles's Golden Days (1939) |
|
| George Bernard Shaw |
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Considered by many to be Shaw's worst play, this late example of his
witty writing may be of special interest to visitors to this site. It
takes place at the home of Sir Isaac Newton where he is joined... (more) |
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Incompleteness (2004) |
|
| Apostolos Doxiadis |
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A play by the author of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture on the last, sad days in the life of Kurt Gödel. After a "workshop production" in Athens, Greece (June 24-28, 2003) the show's official... (more) |
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Infinities (2002) |
|
| John Barrow |
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This play, written by Cambridge cosmologist John Barrow, has been produced and performed in Italy (Milan and Valencia). It is made up of five separate vignettes several of which touch on the deep mathematics... (more) |
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Jumpers (1989) |
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| Tom Stoppard |
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In a philosophical monologue on the nature of morality, a main character considers Zeno's paradox and infinitesimals and imagines a circle as a limit of polygons. (more) |
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Leap (2004) |
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| Lauren Gunderson |
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This play explores the inspiration for Isaac Newton's amazing discoveries in 1664, personifying it in the form of two young girls whose playful interaction leads to the results we remember Newton for today.... (more) |
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Love Counts (2005) |
|
| Michael Hastings (libretto) / Michael Nyman (score) |
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This opera tells the tale of the surprising friendship between a boxer whose career and life are in decline and a mathematics professor who uses arithmetic as a tool to help him out. It premiered in March 2005 at Germany's Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe.
Thanks to Peter Freyd for pointing it out to me. (more) |
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Lovesong of the Electric Bear (2005) |
|
| Snoo Wilson (playwright) |
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This play about Alan Turing, told from the point of view of Porgy, his teddy bear, was produced as part of the Summer 2005 season at the Potomac Theater Project in Maryland. Turing certainly had both... (more) |
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Mrs. Warren's Profession (1894) |
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| George Bernard Shaw |
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This is Shaw's notorious play about poverty and prostitution, the
"profession" of the title. (The play itself was not performed in
public in the UK until 1925.)
Mrs. Warren has made her fortune... (more) |
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Newton's Hooke (2004) |
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| David Pinner |
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A play about Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke which presents "the dark side" of Newton. Emphasis is put on his egotism (not only does he think that he is incomparably brilliant, but he also seems to think... (more) |
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On the marriage of Hermes and Philology (410) |
|
| Marianus Capella |
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"A must in your data base is Martianus Capella (c. 410 A.D.), On the
marriage of Hermes and Philology (translated in english by W.H. Stahl,
Columbia University Press): Hermes is marrying a minor godess
Philology. The Seven Liberal Arts (including Arithmetic, Geometry,
Astronomy and Harmony) come to greet the couple and present themselves."
(more) |
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Partition (2003) |
|
| Ira Hauptman |
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This play about the interaction between the mathematicians Hardy and Ramanujan explores the "partitions" that differentiate the men from eachother (Hardy's mathematical rigor versus Ramanujan's intuitive... (more) |
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The Power of Words (1845) |
|
| Edgar Allan Poe |
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A very short work (two-pages long!) in
which two angels discuss the divine implications of our ability to
mathematically determine the future consequences of an action, especially
wave propagation.... (more) |
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Proof (2000) |
|
| David Auburn (playwright) |
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This Pulitzer Prize winning play (now also a film) focuses on a daughter who took care of her father after his mental disorder forced him to give up his successful career as a mathematician. After the... (more) |
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Refund (1938) |
|
| Fritz Karinthy (original) / Percival Wilde (English Adaptation) |
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A former student demands that his tuition be refunded because he feels his education was worthless, but loses his bid when he is tricked by the mathematics master.
This entry refers to the 1938 adaptation... (more) |
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Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (1967) |
|
| Tom Stoppard |
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This brilliant, weird play, retelling the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet
from the point of view of two "throw away" characters, unfortunately has
very little mathematics in it. However, every few days... (more) |
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Shakespeare Predicted it All (2003) |
|
| Dietmar Dath |
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An artistically composed piece about Georg Cantor, inventor of the theory of transfinite cardinals, in the form of a dialogue between the characters "1" and "2", both of whom are either Cantor or Hamlet.... (more) |
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Slightly Perfect / Are you with it? (1941) |
|
| George Malcolm-Smith (Novel) / Sam Perrin (Script) / George Balzer (Script) |
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Eggheaded actuary Milton Northey Haskins quits his job upon learning that his company has lost money due to his misplaced decimal point and he joins a carnival in the 1941 novel Slightly Perfect. This... (more) |
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Two Trains Running (1990) |
|
| August Wilson |
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This play is set in Pittsburgh, 1969. An economically depressed area
of the city is facing urban renewal, and the specter of eminent domain
seizure hangs over the main character's future. The other... (more) |
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Welcome to Paradise (2005) |
|
| Paul David-Goddard /Helen Miller |
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Not much happens in this play. A young Englishman who has just earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics goes on a trip to Australia to find himself. Co-author Helen Miller based the play on her... (more) |
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