Theater collides with history and science when the Contemporary American Theatre Company and Red Herring Theatre’s co-production of the acclaimed drama “Copenhagen” opens tomorrow.
Micael Frayn’s “Copenhagen” takes poetic license exploring possible scenarios in the friendship-ending meeting between Danish atomic physicist Niels Bohr and his protégé, German Werner Heisenberg, in 1941.
“No one knew what they discussed,” said Bruce Hermann, who plays Heisenberg and is an OSU theater professor. “Everyone now speculates about what that was about because it changed everything.”
The meeting takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark while it is under Nazi occupation. Much speculation has been attributed to this meeting between the two men because they each held the keys to the nuclear bomb’s creation.
“(Bohr) later escaped from Copenhagen … and became part of the Allied team that produced the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Hermann said.
The play depicts possibilities of what may have occurred during the meeting by returning to individual scenes and exploring variations between them.
“The frightening part is that if that meeting had gone differently it certainly could have changed the fate of human history,” said “Copenhagen’s” director and Ohio State theater assistant professor Maureen Ryan.
The play runs through Feb. 22 at Vern Riffe Center’s Studio One Theatre, 77 S. High St. Students may purchase tickets at half price on the day of any performance based upon availability. There also will be a student-senior matinee Wednesday at 10 a.m. and Feb. 11 at 10 a.m.
For ticket availability and pricing call (614)469-0939 or visit CATCO’s Web site at www.catco.org.
As a bonus, a free symposium exploring the historical and scientific elements associated with “Copenhagen” will be held at held at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 10 at the Vern Riffe Center Studio One Theatre. This unique educational opportunity offers students the chance to learn from a panel featuring a historian, a physicist and actors from the “Copenhagen” cast.
Panelists include Maureen Ryan, Dr. Lee L. Riedinger, deputy director for science and technology at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Alan Beyerchen, graduate studies chair in the history department at OSU.
Beyerchen, well known for his book “Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich,” said he plans to talk about the obsessions of the scientists of the period, the belief that German scientists were ahead of the Allies and the idea that knowledge is power during the symposium.
