Actor Tom Alter talks about the play Copenhagen and describes how the characters help him understand their frailties, and through them, their strengths. ‘For I — or all of us — are but human beings, just as they were,’ he writes
Now I am not too certain about the details, but it is fact that Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, a Danish and a German, guru and chela, both Noble prize-winning atomic physicists, put together the ‘Uncertainty Principle’ in the mid 1920’s — in Copenhagen.
In a most remarkable play — titled Copenhagen — the English playwright, Michael Frayn, deftly interweaves physics and physicality, photons and friendships, atoms and attachments, into a tale, a legend, a legacy upon which the entire future of the human race rests.
For it is from the work of Bohr and Heisenberg that the atomic bomb developed — and in the play, the famous meeting between the two great minds, friends, rivals in Copenhagen in September of 1941 becomes the axis, from which spins out not only neutrons but nuclear war itself.
But did Heisenberg try and warn Bohr of the immense danger of using their beloved physics for destructive purposesIJ Would Heisenberg try and stop the Nazi bomb if Bohr did the same for the Allied bombIJ Warn him, as chela and friend, that his hands were tied in patriotic and emotional knots, but he would still walk a tightrope of science, research and danger to trick the Nazis into believing that a bomb was not possible, at the same time keeping the Nazi atomic programme in his trembling but trustworthy handsIJ Did Bohr heed and understand the warningIJ Did he comprehend the terrible uncertainty of the warningIJ
To balance these two male minds on their uncertain, deeply moving, intense, scientific journey, is Margarethe, Bohr’s wife, who is both skeptic and scholar, personal and persuasive, lover and lecturer.
It is a play of journeys, travel — within the atom, within the ‘cloud chamber’, within the reactor — nuclei split by neutrons, energy released, more neutrons produced, and the chain reaction splits and spreads through the uranium, with the final destination the bomb.
Travel — from Germany to Denmark and back again — by foot, train, dreams and despair — a flight in the night to USA for Bohr, ending up at los Alamos and then, in the form of the first atomic bomb, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
More than 30 years before Frayn wrote this magnificent play, Badal Sirkar, one of India’s greatest playwrights of the 20th century (he passed away only months ago) wrote Teesvein Shatabdi.
And in this play, the atomic bomb is mourned and remembered from a different angle — Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now history (if that word can be used), the hydrogen bomb has been tested, and in post-Nehru India a young man is trying to grapple with the fact that under similar circumstances — would not another country India, for instance — have done the same thing that the USA didIJ Is not the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the horror of the entire universeIJ
I play Bohr in Copenhagen. In school Science was my weakest subject. And here I am — acting and playing — two of the greatest scientific minds in history. Einstein and Bohr. In both plays the former speaks of the latter and vice versa as they deal with physics and atoms, fission and neutrons, relativity and uncertainty, reactors and wave theories, Hahn and Fermi, Pauli and Schrodinger, cats and cap pistols, letters to Presidents and los Alamos and death and destruction.
How do I even attempt to make this journeyIJ Because Einstein, Bohr and Cheshire were people. Both Frayn and Sirkar, because they were such fine writers, never let the physics overcome the physical — never let theory be stronger than fact, never let research score over human experience. As Margarethe so wisely says, “Really, it is ridiculous. You reasoned your way, both of you (Bohr and Heisenberg), with such astonishing delicacy and precision into the tiny world of the atom. Now it turns out that everything depends upon these really rather large objects on our shoulders. And what’s going on in there is....”
These really rather large objects on our shoulders. The human head — skull, brain, nerves, tissues, cells, ears, nose, mouth, hair, chin, cheekbone and eyes — vanity, eyebrows, eyelashes, lips, rouge, powder — food going in, and thoughts going out, sounds entering, sounds exiting, thoughts both absorbed and created, a human “cloud chamber”, in which atoms are circling and splitting and forming again with such speed that it is unmeasurable. We look at our head in the mirror, and we blink, or tilt our neck, or pose, or ponder — we look with at what we are looking at — uncertainty —is the image real, or am IIJ Am I in the mirror, or am I the mirrorIJ
Is the atom a nucleus, or the electrons on the spinIJ
Is energy created, or creatingIJ
Are we journeying, or are we being taken on a journeyIJ
Bohr and Einstein and Cheshire — they seemed to be masters of their fates, their own ships and their own captains — until, until, until...
This is the only way I can dare to play such people — to understand their frailties, and through them, their strengths.
For I — or all of us — are but human beings, just as they were.
Ghalib says (roughly translated): “When there was nothing, there was god — if nothing would have happened, there would still have been god; I have drowned only because I existed — if I had never existed, then what would have happenedIJ (or if I had never existed, then what would I have beenIJ”
Uncertainty even in the greatest poetry — or is the poetry great because of the uncertaintyIJ
For in the midst of the journeys of Copenhagen and Teesvein Shatabdi, I have the honour, the blessing, the audacity, the privilege of playing Bahadur Shah Zafar, Mirza Ghalib, MF Husain and Maulana Azad.
It is like the first four of India’s batting lineup when it is — was — functioning in full health and happiness.
In the course of a month — Einstein, Cheshire, Zafar, Ghalib, Husain, Azad and Bohr.
UncertaintyIJ Five of them were alive when the bombs descended on Japan’s heartland. The other two witnessed the destruction of Delhi in 1857, at a time when bombs were hurled from cannons, and did not rain down. But 1857 and 1945 are part of the same journey, the journey which so deeply disturbed the hero of Teesvein Shatabdi, and every one of the seven characters I am so fortunate to play, the journey which all of us are a part of, for we are all made of the same atoms, the same nuclei, the same blood and flesh and failures. The journey of mankind, of humanity, as we fly is like split nuclei at ever increasing speed through the uranium which is our world, our minds, our cities, our countries, our hatred, our loves, our passions, our dreams, our fantasies, our religions, our castes, our creeds, our colours. That uranium which is both us and not us, because we can control part of it, but not all, that uranium which dangles over our heads each second of each day, waiting only for a human hand, a human error, a human passion to cut the thread and let loose atomic hell.
So I play those seven men, those seven minds, those seven collections of atoms — I am humbled and almost hollow — and yet, from inside, I am inspired by them — by their frailties and strengths, to somehow do justice to their lives and their dreams.
To somehow create, with whatever art I possess — from whatever art my own journey has carved without and within me — the truth of those seven men, those seven human atoms — for their truth is my truth, is our truth. It is our hope and our warning.