Before becoming a scientist, Florian Carle worked in the arts. For 12 years he was a theater actor in France before shifting to quantum science; he is now managing director at the Yale Quantum Institute.
Conversely, Vince Tycer worked in the sciences before switching to the arts. He was a computer programmer, and dabbled in physics, but then decided to pursue acting, directing and writing; he is currently an assistant professor in residence in the University of Connecticut’s Drama Department for the Performance/Acting Area.
About a year ago, the two men met and discovered their similar, if flipped, journeys. That commonality led to them to pursue a project that explores quantum theory through art — a production of the play “Copenhagen.”
Written by the British playwright Michael Frayn, the play imagines the conversation that might have taken place when the German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg traveled to Copenhagen during World War II to visit with his Danish counterpart Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe Bohr. Both scientists were pioneers in quantum theory — Heisenberg was Bohr’s student for a period — and both worked on nuclear weapons programs during the war, though on opposite sides of the conflict.
First performed on Broadway in 2000, “Copenhagen” won a Tony Award that year for Best Play. This production, with a three-person cast of graduate student actors from UConn and a creative team that spans undergrads, graduate students and researchers across both universities, will be presented in The Dome at Yale Schwarzman Center at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 29. Sponsored by the Yale Quantum Institute, UConn, and Yale Schwarzman Center, in partnership with the Yale Innovation Summit and QuantumCT, it is free and open to the public, but attendees must pre-register. (There is currently a waitlist.)
Rehearsal in The Dome at Yale Schwarzman Center.
Yale News met with Carle and Tycer to talk about their effort to use art to explore the complexities and nuances of quantum theory. Here are five takeaways:
This is the latest in a series of art and science productions supported by the Yale Quantum Institute.
The Yale Quantum Institute convenes the many researchers campuswide who work in some aspect of quantum mechanics and quantum science. A big part of Carle’s job is to find ways to make quantum science more accessible to non-experts, including first-year Yale students who might be inspired to pursue studies in STEM.
“One of the very efficient ways to do that is to mix humanities and science by having artists come into our labs, learn about quantum mechanics, and then develop collaborative artworks with our researchers that reflect some aspect of that,” Carle said.
In 2017, the institute launched a year-long artist-in-residence program, which has since welcomed artists who have produced quantum-based music, a light show, visual art, a planetarium poetry show, and a museum exhibition.
That program is now helping to support Tycer’s work as director on the production of “Copenhagen,” which is timed to premiere at the conclusion of this year’s two-day Yale Innovation Summit.
Carle and Tycer met through their involvement with QuantumCT.
One area of focus for Tycer at UConn is connecting technology and science with theater and the arts. To that end, a little over a year ago he got involved with QuantumCT, the public-private partnership led by Yale and UConn that aims to accelerate in-state research employing quantum technologies and to position Connecticut as a leader in the field. That’s how he met Carle.
“We got to talking a bit and I was really excited about this opportunity to do a play related to quantum physics,” Tycer said. “And about science applied to morality as well. How the advances of science sometime get ahead of themselves in terms of the oversized impact they can have on humans.
“One of the beautiful things about the show is it brings these high-level concepts that seem like — unless you’re someone like Florian — they are out there in the stratosphere, and it brings it down to the human component. It’s a very human story about these three people, and family, and the impacts of the war.”
The creative team in the Yale Quantum Institute labs
Nobody really knows what Heisenberg and Bohr discussed in Copenhagen.
Heisenberg arranged to meet with his friend and mentor during a September 1941 visit to Nazi-occupied Denmark. The form of physics the two men had pioneered together was by this time being used by both sides in the war to try and build a terribly deadly weapon: the atomic bomb. Heisenberg was deeply engaged with the German nuclear weapons program. (Bohr would later go on to work on the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government’s top-secret atomic bomb program.)
The men hadn’t seen each other since the start of the war. In a BBC interview about the play, Frayn said that Heisenberg is known to have later said that the two began a conversation, but that Bohr became upset, and then angry, and the conversation broke off.
In thinking about what might have taken place at the meeting, Frayn invoked Heisenberg’s famous “uncertainty principle,” which posits that you can’t know everything about tiny particles like electrons with perfect accuracy all at the same time. He said the meeting suggested “a very good parallel” between the uncertainty principle and “the psychological uncertainty that I think exists, the theoretical barrier in knowing why people do what they do. And the particular difficulty of knowing why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen seemed to focus the difficulty in one particular incident.”
Many people suspect, of course, that the men talked about the application of quantum mechanics for bomb application, Carle said.
“It’s a play about what might have happened, but also about a friendship divided during the war,” he said.
The play includes key concepts of quantum theory.
The play’s dialogue is filled with quantum references but uses metaphor to get them across to the audience. It doesn’t come off as a physics lecture, Tycer said, because the concepts are also connected to human relationships.
“The metaphors help you visualize some of the ideas,” he said. “And the play gives you pacing for your understanding. You’re working through it with a dramatic process. People become emotionally invested in understanding the concepts because those concepts are central to the ideas in the play that are dramatic. They’re not just theoretical — they’re about peoples’ lives.”
The hope, Carle said, is that the play might spark interest in quantum theory among audience members who aren’t already in the field and that it may act as a “steppingstone” for them to explore more about quantum on their own.
The production will also be presented at UConn.
Three additional performances are scheduled September 4-6 at 7:30 p.m. at the Connecticut Repertory Theater’s Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre at 802 Bolton Road in Storrs, Connecticut. Tickets are required.
