In the last post, I listed quite a number of science-themed plays that I would love to produce in a series of staged readings. I've sort of been collecting a list as there are relatively few plays that handle science in a meaningful way (presumably because playwrights are fairly averse to the sciences).
Interestingly, my son has been engaging me in a lot of questions about how could one harness photons to rig up a FTL drive or if anything did go faster than light.* I think this shows a very creative/scientific streak and I'm trying to encourage it when I am not completely overwhelmed with other matters. I still remember in middle school asking a chemistry teacher if a heavy atom was split into gold and something else would the gold stick around or would it decay, and she had no idea. (The answer I learned (much later) is that the gold would stick around but the energy to do this is so not worth it for a handful of gold atoms. So this is hardly a substitute for the Philosopher's Stone.)
I had a series of similar conversations not so much in high school but in college, largely with other fine arts students who had a decent grounding in high school physics that was inexorably slipping away. I remember trying to answer what would happen to an enormous pair of scissors if the handles were closed at near light speed, wouldn't that mean than the blade tips would be traveling faster than light? I think the best answer was that the speed would actually lead to sufficient contraction that there would be no violation of the principles of relativity that insist nothing travels faster than light. (At least that was the case back in my day. I am shockingly out-of-date when it comes to "popular" quantum physics, but it seems I may have to bone up. I actually repurchased a couple of books on Einstein and relativity and maybe my son will be ready for them in a couple more years, which is roughly when I was reading about relativity.)
Ok, so what does this have to do with theatre? I am just now inspired to attempt to write a play (probably just a one-act) called The Bull Session (actually maybe The Study Group is better?) where some of this would be kicked around. Now the best bull sessions were in college dorms, but I think it might be more fun if this is a bunch of high school seniors (maybe in a study group for final exams) in someone's basement. I think there might be one science geek type who keeps wanting to jump ahead to physics, and there needs to be one slightly less bright guy who still feeds him these crazy ideas (as part of a money making scheme) and the science geek needs to respond with a bit of contempt as he keeps shooting down the ideas.** (I just realized this same dynamic is in Corporate Codes of Conduct, but this can go a lot broader.) I'll definitely want to work D & D dice in there somehow (and a Magic 8-Ball?).
I think it could be set as late as the early 90s (so pagers but no cell phones). But most likely I'll just stick with what I knew -- late 1980s suburbia. There might be a couple of girls that drop in to study but the dynamic starts to fray. I think the only question is where is the drama and/or farce coming from. Do I want to have some weird thing where the laws of physics are violated or somebody comes back in time with the answers***? (Convenient no?) And I want to talk about a few other things other than physics -- maybe nuclear warheads or Iran-Contra, which was kind of dominating the air in 1986-87. So one kid will be a bit more up on current events/social studies, and one will be better at English. But all are honors students. This did happen back in my day where the smart kids did on occasion study together, even at someone's house. So I think this has promise, but I think I want to make it pretty broad (and not totally dominated by the science guy) and I need some motivating force to give it some shape. I'll want to sleep on it, but the more I think about it, the more I am interested in the idea of two of the kids going upstairs, then coming back from "the future" with the supposed answers to the finals (and maybe a few other things like the final score of a football game) and the science geek trying to explain this away as his world starts crumbling. It might be better if it isn't entirely clear whether it is a practical joke or not. (There is just a bit of a nod to Neil Simon's Rumors going on here. At the same time, maybe too much borrowing from Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour.) So if this ever comes to pass, this is an example of how I find inspiration in all kinds of things -- and why I always have too many projects that are only halfway completed...
* No so far, and the last experimental results that suggested neutrinos could be subliminal appear to have been based on measurement error. I have to say that this Physics World site looks a bit above my head, but maybe it is just the thing I am looking for if my son stays on this physics kick.
** It would be far more realistic if he is only right 2/3 of the time, but it is hard to imagine anything that a general audience would realize he was incorrect about. Maybe he says some idea is stupid like shrinking down a TV to the size of a credit card.
*** Maybe it is just one guy (Eddy?) that slips off, then comes back in disguise as an older version delivering the pizza. Saying that because he failed his finals he didn't go to college etc. So he got ahold of the answer key so that his future self isn't stuck in a dead-end job, but then there is a paradox if they actually let his younger self look at the papers, since he will then not be in a position to want to come back in time. And so forth. Time travel can be a bit mind-boggling to say the least. But one of the girls pipes up at the end that she heard Eddy's older brother was in town to give the whole thing an out. I think this might be the way this shapes up, but I'll let the ideas simmer a bit longer.
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