Michael Frayn's semi-historical play "Copenhagen" is Pen, Paint, and Pretzel's first minor production of the semester. Directed by senior Greg Fujita, "Copenhagen" tells the story of one of the greatest and perhaps most tragic scientific partnerships of the 20th century.
Niels Bohr (senior Alex Sherman) was a Nobel Prize-winning half-Jewish physicist from Denmark who eventually worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos to develop the atomic bomb. Werner Heisenberg (sophomore Jonah Peppiatt) was Bohr's former prot?©§© who went on to head the Nazis' atomic bomb project.
"Copenhagen" presents a fictionalized account of an actual meeting between these two minds in September of 1941. World War II was raging throughout Europe, and mere months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Bohr and Heisenburg met one evening in Copenhagen. Historians know that during their visit, the two physicists went out for a walk in the woods to speak without fear of Gestapo wiretaps.
While what happened in their actual exchange is unknown, Bohr returned to his house in a fury and the two never spoke again. Michael Frayn's script explores the possibilities of a conversation between these two men and Bohr's wife Margarethe (sophomore Lara Kitain) that could have altered the course of history. In this way, "Copenhagen" delves into a discussion of science, ethics and philosophy.
Though the play does involve a good amount of scientific information, much of the beauty of "Copenhagen" rests in the eloquent philosophical exchanges between the characters that make the abstract world of atoms and nuclei a tangible experience.
The play is divided into two acts, the first of which retells the fateful meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg from a fairly neutral perspective. The second act plays more with the temporal space and geography of the play by repeating the scientists' meeting in a much more existential context. Liberated from constraints of time and space, the characters reconstruct that fateful evening, analyzing every aspect of their conversation. The characters are allowed to step out of the moment and look back on it with full knowledge of future events, such as the use of the atomic bomb by U.S. forces and the collapse of the Nazi regime.
One of the core philosophies presented in "Copenhagen" that is deftly reflected in the second act is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. This well-known principle of quantum mechanics states that "the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa."
Fujita thinks this is a crucial concept to understand. "You can't know everything about the universe because as soon as you insert an observer, the universe is changed by what that person sees," he said. As the characters in "Copenhagen" repeat and rework their conversations, new meanings and revelations unfold as to the motivations and rational behind each person's chosen path.
One challenge to the cast of "Copenhagen" was portraying a group of characters that not only were important historical figures, but whose actions might conflict with what the audience would consider ethical behavior.
"For me, my character is about being misunderstood," said Peppiat. "How would it feel if I did something monumental that affects the whole world?" While Heisenberg did work for the German government during the war on the atomic bomb project, he was more pro-Germany and was not a Nazi sympathizer.
For Kitain, who plays Margarethe, the difficulty of creating a character from a historical figure was similar. "You approach [a role] very differently when it's a character who lived. I was nervous at first and did a lot of research. But I realized I have to make the character mine. Then I consciously decided not to look at pictures of her or research more because I wanted to make her my own," she said.
"Copenhagen" is an exciting opportunity to observe scientific and artistic creativity in action. All aspects of the production, even down to the occasional staging of characters as revolving electrons and protons, are presented in such a way as to open the world of physics and philosophy to a new audience.
While you might not make it out of bed for your 9 a.m. physics class, "Copenhagen" is one science lesson you should not miss.
