QED (play)

"QED" is a play by American playwright Peter Parnell, which chronicles (part of) a day in the life of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. It presents scenes from a day in Feynman's life, less than two years before his death, interweaving many strands from Feynman's biography, from the Manhattan project to the Challenger inquiry to more personal topics such as the death of Feynman's wife, and his own fight with cancer. The play, which grew out of a collaboration between Parnell, actor Alan Alda and director Gordon Davidson, premiered in 2001. The original production was performed first at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and, from late 2001 to mid-2002, on Broadway, directed by Davidson and starring Alda as Feynman.

Plot

Set in June, 1986, less than two years before Feynman's death, in Feynman's office at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, the play follows Feynman through a day of his life. As the real Feynman does in his books What Do You Care What Other People Think? and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, the stage character talks directly to the audience; we learn from this and from phone calls with off-stage characters that Feynman is to appear that night playing his bongo drums in a student production of the musical South Pacific, that he is expecting a delegation from the Russian Republic of Tuva, which Feynman is whimsically determined to visit (as detailed in Ralph Leighton's book, Tuva or Bust), and that he is eager to make his views known in the final report of the Rogers Commission charged with the Challenger disaster. From phone conversations between Feynman and his doctors, we also learn that Feynman's cancer has returned, and that his doctors are urging him to undergo further surgical procedures, which are not without their own risk. Feynman's conversation with the audience also touches on a number of additional topics well-known to readers of his autobiographical writings: the Manhattan project and safe-cracking, how he learned to draw, his father, as well as musings on physics and, more generally, on the nature of science and knowledge. [Harvnb|Goodstein|2001]

In the second act, the play returns to Feynman's study later at night on the same day, after the performance is over. We meet the only other character in addition to the main protagonist: a (fictional) young student by the name of Miriam Field, who has attended one of Feynman's lectures and both witnessed his bongo performance and attended the after-play party. Where Feynman had earlier grown dispirited both by his own condition and by memories of his long-dead wife, Miriam manages to pull him out of his depression. Feynman informs his doctors that he will consent to have surgery, after all. [Harvnb|Goodstein|2001]

History and productions

In the mid-1990s, Alan Alda, having read Feynman's autobiographical books, became intent on playing Feynman on stage. He consulted director Gordon Davidson at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, who suggested that playwright Peter Parnell as the play's author. Over the course of more than six years, the three went through many revisions in their combined effort to bring the many facets of Feynman's character to the stage. [Ch. 12 in Harvnb|Alda|2007]

The play premiered on March 25, 2001, at the Mark Taper Forum. [A review is Harvnb|Goodstein|2001] Later that year, the production went to Broadway, where it was performed 40 times between November 18, 2001 and June 20, 2002 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. [ [http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=13181 IBDB entry] ] Six years later, Alda briefly revisited his role in a scenic reading at Columbia University's Miller Theatre as part of the 2008 World Science Festival, once more directed by Davidson. [ [http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/2008-festival/events/all-events/qed-with-alan-alda/ Event description on the Festival website] , last accessed on 2008-06-11]

References

Bibliography

*Citation|last=Alda|first=Alan|title=Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself|year=2007|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-1-4000-6617-9|oclc=122309367
*Citation|last=Goodstein|first=David|title=Feynman returns to centre stage|date=May 1, 2001|journal=Physics World|year=2001|url=http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/2389
*Citation|last=Parnell|first=Peter|title=QED: A Play|publisher=Applause Books|year=2002|isbn=978-1557835925|oclc=50004999
* A brief excerpt from the play was published as [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE4DD123FF933A15757C0A9649C8B63 THINK TANK: How Does a Photon Decide Where to Go? That's the Quantum Mystery] in "The New York Times" (April 20, 2002)

External links

* [http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=13181 QED at the Internet Broadway Data Base]