Our playwright, Simon Stephens, internationally renowned for his award-winning play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, borrows the title for Heisenberg from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics, even though it is never explicitly mentioned in the play. (The title has nothing to do with the character in AMC’s Breaking Bad.)
I spoke with Dr. Dale Li, a quantum physicist at Stanford University, about the use of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as a metaphor for human relationships and he said, “Quantum Mechanics is rich with unique conceptual ideas, but often times people make tenuous analogies with philosophy because it’s natural to try to connect new things with things we know in order to gain intuition or insight. But the danger is in relying on analogies to actually understand a wholly new concept.” Then Dr. Li pointed me to something primordial about the science of observation, a quote by renowned physicist Richard Feynman: “I will not describe it in terms of an analogy with something familiar. I will simply describe it,” and that is exactly what Simon Stephens does in Heisenberg: He simply describes the relationship between Georgie and Alex and leaves it up to us to struggle with our desire to see it in terms of something familiar, to struggle with our tendency to judge something according to our default assumptions about reality.
Chris Thatcher
Artistic Director
Drala Productions
