On Friday, I saw a science play for the first time: QED, a play about Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. (It was put on by the Catalyst Collaborative, a partnership between MIT and the Underground Railway Theater, as part of the Cambridge Science Festival).

I ran a news story here on NNB a couple of years ago about how theater could be used to bring science to the masses in an entertaining and enlightening way. On Friday, I decided to see a play about science to experience for myself whether theater could teach me a little (or at least increase my appreciation for) an area of science that I know little about: quantum physics (and basically, anything with the word “quantum” in front of it.)

QED brings us into the office of Feynman in 1986 at Caltech on a Saturday and the play is basically a long, meandering, sometimes moving, sometimes funny conversation between him and the audience. It’s interrupted by phone calls with his doctor (he was battling cancer at the time), friends, and officials from Washington DC, as well as a couple of visits from a keen student. Feynman, played by actor Keith Jochim, tells lots of stories in a chatty, jokey kind of way and talks about science, a little bit about his research, his work with the Manhattan Project, his first wife who died many years earlier, his efforts with the Presidential commission to investigate the Challenger disaster, and his recurring cancer. He also manages to squeeze in basic lessons about light (are they waves or particles or both?). Through that, we get a glimpse of what Feynman was like: mischievous, wacky, intensely curious about everything, fascinated with nature.

After the play, the actors came out to answer questions from the audience and they were joined by MIT physicist and emeritus professor Jerome Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1990 and who also knew Feynman. Friedman said the play “captured the essence” of Feynman as an irreverent, unconventional guy.

While I can’t say I learned a lot of physics, or gained any new understanding of quantum mechanics, I would say that what came through in the play was a sense for what science is (“tricking Nature into revealing her secrets”), how it’s done (“if you ask the right question, nature will give you the right answer”), and how fun, awe-inspiring, fascinating and exciting problem-solving and doing science can be. And who better to communicate that message than an eccentric and brilliant scientist like Richard Feynman.

Could such a play change the way a non-scientist audience member thinks about science and scientists? Possibly, given the experience of the actor who played Feynman. In the Q&A session, Jochim said that as a result of playing the part of Feynman and reading other books about him/by him, he found himself becoming more curious about the world around him, asking questions he probably wouldn’t have asked before.

I saw a couple of school kids in the audience with their parents. I think watching this sort of play about science should be a field trip for young science students. Science classes are good at teaching the facts and methods, but do they instill in students the fun and excitement of science? Because, as I wrote in another blog post, I think one of the things all people should know about science is that it can be fun. (I think such a play could benefit burnt out grad students/postdocs too—a good reminder of why they got into science in the first place.)

The Cambridge Science Festival wraps up today, but QED will be reopening again in July in Cambridge at the new Central Square Theater.