BENGALURU: While the West has mastered producing theatre plays and films centred around science, Bengaluru-based Nilanjan Choudhury has been attempting to write and share with the audience some untold stories of scientists and their discoveries through theatre performances. Choudhury’s play, The Square Root of a Sonnet produced by a US-based non-profit company, Bay Area Drama Company, was recently staged in California.
Directed by Ranjita Chakraborty, The Square Root of a Sonnet explores the relationship between two giants of modern astrophysics - Chandra and his guru Sir Arthur Eddington. The story revolves around ambition, betrayal, friendship, set against the backdrop of two world wars, the Indian freedom movement and the birth of the new scientific theories - relativity and quantum mechanics.
Inspired by the book Empire of the Stars, written by American playwright Arthur Miller on Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Choudhury feels that scripting a play of this genre requires more effort than writing a novel. “The play is a combination of historical facts and imagination. We did not have to start from scratch, but had to build upon something that was already there. It was an imaginative work based on actual happenings...we had characters like Eddington, Chandra and his wife Lalitha whose roles were already defined. This made it easier for me to work on the play,” says Choudhury, who is also the author of Shillong Times.
Choudhury believes that science theatre plays are a rarity in the Indian theatre fraternity, because of the challenges involved. “It’s hard to find material without conflict, while at the same time convey complex details in an interesting manner. In The Square Root of a Sonnet, I’ve got into the details of the science behind blackholes. If you are sharing a tale on science and you don’t really break it down, then there is no true marriage between science and theatre,” says the IIT-Kanpur graduate.
Already on his next mission, Choudhury is looking forward to his next play, based on Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, who worked on symmetry and the four fundamental forces that have shaped human lives. This has been written for the Centre for Film and Drama.
In addition, he has also written a third science play on genetic engineering technique CRISPER. “I feel that performing science plays in regional languages will have a wider reach. However, it is easier for us to identify scientific terms in English, unless you are from a different schooling model,” says Choudhury, who is juggling between putting together his new novel and working as a science communicator with an organisation called Curiouscity, which is attempting to build a science centre in Bengaluru.