A math professor and a literature professor attempt to collaborate on an interdisciplinary course in this semi-autobiographical one act play.
To begin with, I should admit that nearly everything I know about this play I learned from Stephen Abbott's review in the AMS Notices. It has only been performed a few times (at the 2015 Joint Mathematics Meetings, at the National Museum of Mathematics and at a few universities), and I have not yet had a chance to see it myself.
Manil Suri is a mathematician who has won awards for his fiction (and is already listed on this site as an author of mathematical fiction). Together with Michelle Osherow, an English professor and director of the Jewish Studies program, he taught an interdisciplinary course at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That experience inspired this play in which such a course is taught by the fictional characters "Mike Pearson" and "Naomi Kessler". The play apparently not only explores the topics of the class, but also the conflict between the two instructors and their philosophies.
The most intriguing thing to me about this play (which, as I remind you, I have not seen) is that it is not merely a work of mathematical fiction, but more specifically a work about mathematical fiction.
In one scene quoted in Abbott's review, the characters attempt to select works of fiction to include in the syllabus. Pearson suggests Logicomix and Flatland, and Kessler suggests A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting, but each rudely and abruptly rejects the other's proposals with the honk of a party horn. |