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Mathematics on the Stage

It's not every day that the artistic director of one of New Zealand's most successful theatres rings you up to talk about chaos theory and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Elric Hooper of the Court Theatre was enthusing about their production of Tom Stoppard's latest comedy Arcadia -- and with good reason.

I wish I could have had a videotape of the scene where Valentine, a mathematician, explains the joy of the hunt for the chaos-based mathematics underlying the disordered and unpredictable. Stoppard may be no scientist, but he certainly captured the enthusiasm and excitement of someone caught up in their research. It's a wonderful scene, which has Valentine delightedly crowing:

The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and snowstorm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.

Mathematics and physics are not the most common subjects to appear on the stage, but Arcadia managed to combine them with a literary mystery, academic one-upmanship, and gardening as a metaphor for social history. In a pre-run lecture covering "Science, Sex and Humour", Elric posed the question of why we see so little science in our theatres -- playwrights (and their electronic counterparts) aren't afraid to throw in literary themes, music tidbits, cultural and historical references, yet are shy of tapping into another whole body of knowledge.

Perhaps it's because this is an area with which they are unfamiliar themselves, or which they feel would alienate their audience. Perhaps it's because few have realised the joy, agony, passion and despair that can be as much a part of a life in science as in any other human endeavour.

One of the endearing things about Arcadia is the way in which it shows the science as part of people's lives, and those involved in it as human beings. All too often, scientists are treated on stage and screen as little more than a collection of bad wigs, bad accents and one-dimensional characterisations.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.