Strings

The Open Book presents the premiere of Strings, a new play of elegant, cutting-edge physics thoroughly entangled with deeply familiar-and unruly-human pain, passion, and desire by Carole Buggé, directed by Marvin Kaye.

On a train en route to London to attend the play Copenhagen, two English physicists, upper-class cosmologist George and brilliant working-class String theorist Rory, along with George’s American cosmologist wife June, pursue their complex ideas about physics — a conversation that barely masks just-below-the-surface deceit and lies. Old Cambridge University classmates George and Rory dig at one another, with June caught in the middle. In the process they also unwittingly excavate their scars of jealousy, loss and grief, finally exposing their deepest longings for meaning in a questionably trustworthy universe. This train ride firmly intertwines cool science with the heat of emotional desire and longing. Strings is loosely based on the real-life train ride event in which American physicists Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt and English physicist Neil Turok tweaked the Big Bang theory — and changed it forever.