Theatre, mathematics, and the aesthetics of infinity: Complicite’s A Disappearing Number

ABSTRACT

Complicite's A Disappearing Number is one of the best examples of contemporary plays that use theatrical strategies to convey complex scientific ideas. Complicite uses performance to stage the complex mathematical concepts of partition and infinite convergent series, taking inspiration from the statement by renowned British mathematician G. H. Hardy that “a mathematician... is a maker of patterns”. As well as performativity, other elements in the play contribute to performing mathematics on the stage, elements such as time and space, narrative structure, thematic content, and characterization. Complicite introduces a complex pattern that runs throughout the play to connect these elements to form a complete whole. These elements effectively work with each other to release a set of clues that guide the audience towards decoding the play's pattern. This study provides an in-depth analysis of these connections and the complex process of decoding the pattern in the play.

KEYWORDS:

• A Disappearing Number
• mathematics
• theatre
• pattern
• narrative
• performance
• partition
• infinite series

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Seyedeh Anahit Kazzazi graduated with a PhD degree in English Literature from the University of Sussex in 2017. She is particularly interested in literature which examines the intersection between science, literature, philosophy, and theatre. She is also interested in comparative studies between Contemporary British/American and Persian theatre and drama.

Notes

1 A Disappearing Number was proceeded by another successful science performance by Complicite, Mnemonic, first produced in 1999. In this play, Complicite uses dramaturgical and theatrical techniques to enact the complex mechanism of simulation and connection on which the act of remembrance is based.

2 References to the theatricality and dramaturgy of the play are based on the 2007 production of the play at Barbican, a DVD of which is available from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

3 A Disappearing Number is only one example of science plays/performances that put different historical worlds in direct communication. Ira Hauptman’s Partition (2003), Shelagh Stephenson’s An Experiment with an Air-pump, Complicite’s Mnemonic, After Darwin, and Arcadia, for instance, also displace the conventional map of theatrical time by jumping from one historical world to another, or by having different worlds simultaneously present on stage.

4 There is no doubt that the tradition of nonlinear narrative structure has been an integral element of Western avant-garde theatre for a long time, such as in surrealism, abstract expressionism, Brechtian epic theatre, the theatre of the absurd, and postmodernism. Such narrative structures have formerly also been present in traditional forms of theatre in various cultures such as in Tazieh (Condolence Theatre) and Shahnameh-Khani in Persian culture, in Panchatantra Katha in Indian culture, and in Tuluat Theatre in Turkish culture. In these traditional forms of theatre the time slightly or radically changes from one time frame to another and from one narrative to another. In A Disappearing Number, however, this nonlinearity of narrative structure is achieved by employing the mathematical concepts of partition, infinite convergent series, and Hardy’s statement that ‘a mathematician … is a maker of patterns’ as the forces behind the narrative structure of the play. In other words, the nonlinear narrative structure is at the service of most effectively conveying the mathematical ideas that the play contains.

5 Rick Kemp has used the science of distributed cognition to discuss devised performance, arguing that due to the latter’s tendency to be collaborative and multimodal, in the final devised performance the expression of the story is distributed, i.e. it arises in a context formed of multiple agents, including people (performers, designers, writers, musicians, technicians, etc.) and the physical environment (space, location, objects, light, sound, temperature, textures and so on). Distributed cognition provides for fruitful discussion of the formation and presentation of story in A Disappearing Number with reference to these agents, as well as the narrative structure discussed in the present study. See Kemp (2018, 48–57).

6 For more information on how performance is used in the play to convey the concept of partition see Campos (2007, 326–334, 331).

7 There is a famous anecdote about Hardy and Ramanujan’s collaboration: Hardy explains,

I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. ‘No’, he replied, ‘it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways’. (qtd. in Albers, Alexanderson, and Dunham 2015, 60)