Published in the Oct. 1-14, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Marty Cheek
The selection of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Proof” to open the South Valley Civic Theatre’s 2014-2015 season was a risky choice but a smart one. David Auburn’s play is the first straight drama SVCT has ever performed, and it really shows how far our local theater company has evolved in 45 years.
I lived in London for several years when I worked for an international news service, and during that time I saw many stage performances in the city known as the theater capitol of the world. The acting range by the four SVCT actors — particularly Angie Higgins playing the central role of Catherine — at the Sept. 19 performance of “Proof” was just as impressive as what I saw in many plays I attended in London’s West End theater district.
Photo by Marty Cheek
Doug Doughty as Robert and Angie Higgins as Catherine in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Proof,” now playing at the Community Playhouse.
In the play, Catherine must deal with her grief while preparing for the funeral of her mathematical genius father Robert (played by Doug Doughty), a professor at the University of Chicago. The young woman had cared for her father through a lengthy mental illness, and must now find new purpose in life. Catherine also develops an antagonist relationship with Robert’s ex-graduate student Hal (played by Andrew Cummings) who discovers a paradigm-shifting proof about prime numbers in Robert’s office. Catherine’s sister Claire (played by Denee Lewis Bohnsack) also adds to the balance in questions about women and academics as Catherine must prove to her she is capable of creating an idea that can rock the world of mathematics.
The high quality of Auburn’s writing and the excellent SVCT performances might be reason enough to attend an upcoming performance of “Proof.” But if you’re open to drama that stimulates you both intellectually and emotionally, the play has much more to offer.
The play explores the impact that being a caregiver to a mentally or physically ailing parent can have on a daughter or son’s life and relationship with other siblings. But the bigger question the play brings up — and it’s especially relevant for the high-tech industry of the Silicon Valley region — is why women do not seem to gain a status in science and mathematical academics comparable with men.
In “Proof,” the character Hal refers to a French noble woman named Marie-Sophie Germain who was born in 1776 and spent the time of the terrors of the French Revolution in the safety of her father’s library studying mathematical volumes. Against her parents’ oppositions and French society’s shunning of women in academics, Germain became a pioneer of elasticity theory and won the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for her work on the subject. She also set a foundation for prime numbers study, which relates to the math proof in Auburn’s play.
There have been other women who have contributed to the field of mathematical discovery. Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, in 1842 wrote a computer program — even though these machines would not be invented until much later. Grace Hopper, an American scientist in the U.S. Navy, during World War II invented the first compiler for a computer programming language.
The play “Proof” is particularly topical because in August 28-year-old Stanford University mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to win the Field Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics.
“Proof” might be a challenge for some theater goers who are not use to such a heavy-weighted and topical story, but it’s well worth seeing before it ends its run Oct. 11. And if you have a daughter of high school age who shows interest in a possible career in math and science, I especially encourage you to share the enjoyment of SVCT’s excellent stage drama with her.
