Bridges 2018 Theatre Performance
Witches of Agnesi
by Susan Gerofsky
Saturday, July 28th, 13:00–14:00
Open to the public
Characters
- Maria Gaetana Agnesi; Pietro Agnesi; Father Ramiro Rampinelli; Pope Benedict XIV; Prof. John Colson
- Sofya Kovalevskaya; Vasily Korvin-Krukovsky; Anyuta Krukovskaya; Vladimir Kovalevsky; Karl Weierstrass
- Emmy Noether; Max Noether; Felix Klein; David Hilbert; An unnamed Princeton academic
Historical Background
Maria Agnesi, Sofya Kovalevskaya and Emmy Noether were three women mathematicians in three different eras (the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries respectively), all of whom contributed significantly to the advancement of mathematical research in their days. Their lives, characters and mathematical interests were quite different:
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Agnesi was known for her comprehensive explication of mathematical analysis. She left her life as a renowned mathematician from a wealthy family in Milan to take up voluntary poverty as a lay nun.
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Kovalevskaya worked in analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics, and published novels and poetry. She escaped the stifling conformity of her provincial bourgeois Russian family through an unconventional marriage arrangement, living the life of youthful radical intellectual in Europe.
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Noether, one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of the 20th century, developed the theory of rings, fields and algebras, and theorized connections between symmetries, invariants and conservation laws. She fled Nazi Germany for the US in the 1930s, enduring many hardships with equanimity.
Despite their differences, all three faced incredible obstacles: all were denied official access to undergraduate and graduate studies, and then denied recognition and paid positions as researchers and professors. All three had their causes promoted by influential mentors, and yet faced almost insurmountable barriers, simply because they were women. What might their lives and contributions have been if they had been welcomed into the academic world?
The Play
The play brings together these three women mathematicians from three centuries in a mysterious meeting place, where they share a pot of tea, hang out the laundry, and tell the stories of their lives and careers. The title, Witches of Agnesi, draws on a deliberately mischievous mistranslation of Maria Agnesi’s ‘curve of Agnesi’ to ‘witch of Agnesi’.
The play is designed to be performed on a outdoor stage, with each of the three protagonists ‘doubled’ (one actor playing the voice, the other acting out the part). Each of the protagonists has a song, in the style of her place and time, revealing aspects of her life and work. Shakespeare’s Witches’ Chants from Macbeth and other cultural touchstones are also influences.
Who Can Participate?
Bridges 2018 participants are invited to contact Susan Gerofsky and Steve Abbott to get involved as actors, singers, musicians and technical people for the play. Witches of Agnesi will premiere at Bridges 2018 Stockholm on an outdoor stage, or indoors in case of inclement weather.
Organizers
Susan Gerofsky (writer/ producer) is a professor of mathematics education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Her research is in embodied, multisensory, multimodal mathematics education through the arts, movement, gesture and voice. Gerofsky is active as a musician, poet and filmmaker, and loves dance and the fibre arts. She wrote and produced the Bridges 2017 play performed at the University of Waterloo, Kepler: A Renaissance Folk Play in Verse (forthcoming in The Mathematical Intelligencer in the summer of 2018).
Steve Abbott (director) is a professor of mathematics at Middlebury College. For the past ten years he has been collaborating with a colleague in the theater department on an ever-evolving course, most recently titled "Mathematics and Science as Art in Contemporary Theater". Steve writes regularly about happenings in theater and mathematics, especially in Math Horizons where he has served as coeditor. He has brought a versatile group of players together at Bridges for many years to stage mathematically-themed plays, from first read-through to public production, over the course of a busy five days of the Bridges conference –a directorial accomplishment worthy of acclaim!