''A Disappearing Number'' is a 2007 play co-written and devised by the Théâtre de Complicité company and directed and conceived by English playwright

Simon McBurney Simon Montagu McBurney (born 25 August 1957) is an English actor, playwright, and theatrical director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films ''The Manchurian Candidate'', ...

. It was inspired by the collaboration during the 1910s between the pure mathematicians

Srinivasa Ramanujan Srinivasa Ramanujan (; born Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar, ; 22 December 188726 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, ...

from India, and the

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

don G.H. Hardy. It was a co-production between the UK-based theatre company Complicite and

Theatre Royal, Plymouth Theatre Royal, Plymouth, is a theatre venue in Plymouth, Devon. It consists of a 1,300-seat main auditorium, The Lyric, which regularly hosts large-scale musicals, opera and ballet; a 200-seat studio, The Drum; and a 50-seat studio, The Lab. O ...

, and

Ruhrfestspiele Ruhrfestspiele (Ruhr Festival) in Recklinghausen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is one of the oldest theatre festivals in Europe. Founded after World War II, the festival is a major annual cultural event for the Ruhr area. It always starts on 1 ...

Wiener Festwochen __NOTOC__ The Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival) is a cultural festival in Vienna that takes place every year for five or six weeks in May and June. The Wiener Festwochen was established in 1951, when Vienna was still occupied by the four Alli ...

, and the

Holland Festival The Holland Festival () is the oldest and largest performing arts festival in the Netherlands. It takes place every June in Amsterdam. It comprises theatre, music, opera and modern dance. In recent years, multimedia, visual arts, film and ...

. ''A Disappearing Number'' premiered in Plymouth in March 2007, toured internationally, and played at

The Barbican Centre The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhib ...

in Autumn 2007 and 2008 and at

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...

in July 2010. It was directed by

with music by

Nitin Sawhney Nitin Sawhney , D.Mus (; born 1964) is a British musician, producer and composer. A recipient of the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award in 2017, among multiple international awards throughout his career. Sawhney's work combines Asian a ...

. The production is 110 minutes with no intermission. The piece was co-devised and written by the cast and company. The cast in order of appearance: Firdous Bamji, Saskia Reeves, David Annen,

Paul Bhattacharjee Gautam Paul Bhattacharjee (4 May 1960 – c. 10 July 2013) was a British actor who worked on stage, film and television. Early life and career The son of Gautam Bhattacharjee, a member of the Indian Communist Party who had to flee from the cou ...

, Shane Shambu, Divya Kasturi and Chetna Pandya.

Plot

Ramanujan first attracted Hardy's attention by writing him a letter in which he proved that :

1+2+3+\cdots = -\frac\ (\Re)

where the notation

(\Re)

indicates a

Ramanujan summation Ramanujan summation is a technique invented by the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan for assigning a value to divergent infinite series. Although the Ramanujan summation of a divergent series is not a sum in the traditional sense, it has prop ...

. Hardy realised that this confusing presentation of the series

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯ The infinite series whose terms are the natural numbers is a divergent series. The ''n''th partial sum of the series is the triangular number : \sum_^n k = \frac, which increases without bound as ''n'' goes to infinity. Because the sequence of pa ...

was an application of the

Riemann zeta function The Riemann zeta function or Euler–Riemann zeta function, denoted by the Greek letter (zeta), is a mathematical function of a complex variable defined as \zeta(s) = \sum_^\infty \frac = \frac + \frac + \frac + \cdots for \operatorname(s) > ...

\zeta(s)

with

s=-1

. Ramanujan's work became one of the foundations of

bosonic string theory Bosonic string theory is the original version of string theory, developed in the late 1960s and named after Satyendra Nath Bose. It is so called because it contains only bosons in the spectrum. In the 1980s, supersymmetry was discovered in the co ...

, a precursor of modern

string theory In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and intera ...

. The play includes live ''

tabla A tabla, bn, তবলা, prs, طبلا, gu, તબલા, hi, तबला, kn, ತಬಲಾ, ml, തബല, mr, तबला, ne, तबला, or, ତବଲା, ps, طبله, pa, ਤਬਲਾ, ta, தபலா, te, తబల� ...

'' playing, which "morphs seductively into pure mathematics", as the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

'' review put it, "especially when … its rhythms shade into chants of number sequences reminiscent of the libretto to

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive ...

's ''

Einstein on the Beach ''Einstein on the Beach'' is an opera in four acts composed by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson, who also collaborated with Glass on the work's libretto. The opera eschews traditional narrative in favor of a formali ...

''. One can hear the beauty of the sequences without grasping the rules that govern them." The play has two strands of narrative and presents strong visual and physical theatre. It interweaves the passionate intellectual relationship between Hardy and the more intuitive Ramanujan, with the present-day story of Ruth, an English maths lecturer, and her husband, Al Cooper, a globe-trotting Indian-American businessman "to illuminate the beauty and the patterns — the mystery — of mathematics."Jeff Lunden, "'A Disappearing Number': A Vivid Theatrical Equation"
''NPR Morning Edition'', 15 July 2010 It also explores the nature and spirituality of infinity, and explores several aspects of the Indian

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

. Ruth travels to India in Ramanujan's footsteps and eventually dies. Al follows, to get closer to her ghost. Meanwhile, 100 years previously, Ramanujan is travelling in the opposite direction, making the trip to England, where he works with Hardy on maths and contracts tuberculosis. Partition (as a maths concept) is explored, and diverging and converging series in mathematics become a metaphor for the Indian

Awards and nominations

* 2007 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play * 2007 Evening Standard Award for Best Play * 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play

References

External links

Complicite official website

''A Disappearing Number'' at the Barbican
{{DEFAULTSORT:Disappearing Number 2007 plays Laurence Olivier Award-winning plays West End plays Mathematics and culture Srinivasa Ramanujan English plays Plays based on actual events Fiction set in the 1910s Plays set in England India in fiction Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom Plays about race and ethnicity University of Cambridge in fiction

Plot

Awards and nominations

References

Further reading

External links