Ithaca College

On Thursday, October 30th, at 6:30 p.m. in the Handwerker Gallery, the On the Verge play-reading series will present a reading of Michael Frayn's 1998 play, COPENHAGEN, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the C.P. Snow lecture series at Ithaca College. COPENHAGEN, a brilliant and elegant brain-teaser of a play, concerns the controversial meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in occupied Denmark in 1941.

Although it is a matter of historical record that this meeting did take place, the substance of what passed between the two men remains stubbornly uncertain today, as they could never agree upon the answer during their lifetimes. COPENHAGEN brings Bohr, Heisenberg and Bohr's wife together after all three parties have died, for one final, post mortem reconsideration of that fateful meeting. Yet they find themselves as incapable of making their way back to certainty as they were when they were living. Thus, Heisenberg's famous uncertainty principle, which forever altered the way scientists understand our ability to measure reality, becomes a metaphor in the play for "the darkness inside the human soul," or our inability to ever truly know our pasts, our loved ones, and our selves. COPENHAGEN's director is Claire Gleitman, professor in the department of English, and its cast will include Kathleen Mulligan (faculty member, department of Theater), Cam Wenrich (BFA acting major, Theater), and Craig MacDonald (a local professional actor).

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