Published
August 8th 2000.
Why do I go
to the theatre? The question bears the same gravitas
as the one regarding books. Much like books, the theatre allows me to
experience something different. Not like books or movies though, the theatre
often feels more real since I share the same space as the actors. While books
can help me enter the world of the story, and temporarily leave my own life,
being a theatre buff can also bring meaning into my life as well. Maybe the
play shows me a different perspective of the world that I did not notice
before. Often, plays give me that something extra, be it the love, the
strength, the determination, etc. that I need to move forward in my life.
What about
“Copenhagen”? Bottom-line. It’s a Hamlet play. It’s also about the fallibility
of memory, human relationships, and being at a crossroad in life:
"Now we’re all dead and gone, yes, and there are only two things
the world remembers about me. One is the uncertainty principle, and the other
is my mysterious visit to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941. Everyone
understands uncertainty. Or thinks he does. No one understands my trip to
Copenhagen. Time and time again I’ve explained it. To Bohr himself, and
Margrethe. To interrogators and intelligence officers, to journalists and
historians. The more I’ve explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become. Well,
I shall be happy to make one more attempt. Now we’re all dead and gone. Now no
one can be hurt, now no one can be betrayed."
(Act One)
Occasionally,
instead of a normal evening at the theatre, sometimes I get a powerful, and
thought-provoking play to watch. That play was "Copenhagen". My wife
and I faced the rain to go and watch it. I had not read up about the play, or had
watched it before, and it came as a total surprise in 2005. Theatre and
Physics. What a combination. I watched it in Portuguese at Teatro Aberto in
Lisbon: starring Paulo Pires (as Niels Bohr), Carmen Dolores (as Margrethe Bohr,
her last play), Luís Alberto (as Werner Heisenberg), Vera San Payo de Lemos
(translator) and João Lourenço as stage director.
The
most important “piece of text” in the play, and the one I tend to think as the
one that most perfectly identifies the core of it, is the following (quoted
verbatim from the text I just read):
Bohr:
Why are you confident that it's going to
be so reassuringly difficult to build a bomb with 235? Is it because you've
done the calculation?
Heisenberg:
The calculation?
Bohr: Of the diffusion in 235. No, it's because
you haven't calculated it. You haven't considered calculating it. You hadn't
consciously realized there was a calculation to be made.
Heisenberg:
And of course now I have realized. In
fact it wouldn't be all that difficult. Let's see … The scattering
cross-section's about 6 x 10-24, so the mean free path would be … Hold on …
This
is the dialogue I remember most vividly when I watched the play in 2005 (with
text in Portuguese of course, but as soon as I read them in English in 2015
everything came back to me). Stage-wise what happened? At Heisenberg’s words an
explosion, bright light, and a racket filled the stage, simulating the burst of
a bomb.
Was
this a world-changing decision as some proclaim? Did it change the outcome of
the war? After reading the play (and remembering the play), I think that’s what
Frayn tried to state.
Reading
the play in 2015, and after watching it 10 years ago, I came to understand that
the material is very rich in terms of exploring the social aspects and the
ethical dilemmas in science, particularly the ones involving the two most
important physicists in terms of quantum theory and nuclear fission. The presence of the fundamental aspects of the
complementary and uncertainty principles in the lines of the characters the way
Frayn did, helped me understand, in a theatre play, how seamless it all can
seem. Socially speaking, the play showed
me that Quantum Mechanics, and the Copenhagen Interpretation in particular, was
developed in a wider context, involving ethical issues among top scientists.
Although with only three characters, in a theory that had many contributors
(Born, Dirac, Schrödinger, Pauli, etc.) in terms of its foundation, the play can
be seen as an instrument for a more widespread discussion of the role of
science and its use society-wise.
After
reading the play, I just wanted to watch it again. I remember what was going
through my mind when I watched it 10 years ago: did Heisenberg really dragged
his ass so that the German Bomb effort would fail, allowing the allies to be
able to get the bomb first? Did Heisenberg really know how to create an atomic
bomb? Was he really able to perform basic mathematical calculations? Was he the
genius everyone thought he was (I think he was; his approach to Quantum
Mechanics using matrix algebra was nothing short of masterful)? Did he want to
prevent the allies from developing the bomb? Was he an infiltrated German agent
only trying to worm information out of Bohr? All of these run through my mind
while watching the play in 2005 and now 10 years later the same thing happened,
but the answers were nowhere to be seen, as expected. Too bad this play isn’t
playing anywhere…I’m off to watch the movie version directed by Howard Davies, starring
Daniel Craig and Stephen Rea. It isn’t the real McCoy, but what is?
