Proof

By David Auburn

January 9-31, 2004

Directed by Rhonda Clark

Although a brilliant mathematical proof figures in the play PROOF the formula for love and understanding is the hardest thing to calculate in David Auburn’s award-winning drama which continues Carpenter Square Theatre’s 20th Anniversary Season. PROOF plays January 9-31 at Stage Center in downtown Oklahoma City.

At the heart of the play is a father-daughter relationship. When the play opens, we meet Catherine on her 25th birthday. She has given up her own college education in order to care for her professor-father, a genius in mathematics who suffered with mental illness for several years. Now she’s at the crossroads of her haunting past and a blank future.

Foremost in her mind is the fear that she has inherited her father’s mental instability. After all, she inherited his mathematical ability. During this unsettling time, two arrivals shake up her life even further. The first is Hal, a former student of her father’s who comes to the house to catalogue her father’s vast collection of notebooks. A romance between the two quickly ignites.

The second arrival is her estranged sister Claire who swoops in from Wall Street to tidy up their father’s affairs, and tidy up Catherine’s life. However, Catherine’s biggest challenge begins when Hal uncovers a notebook that contains a major mathematical proof that may or may not have been written by the father.

David Auburn traces the genesis of PROOF from two ideas: “I started with the idea of two sisters fighting over something that had been left behind by their father after his death. I also had been toying with the notion of a character whose parent had suffered from mental illness and was becoming concerned that the same thing was happening to her.” While reading several books about science and math, he learned that a number of famous mathematicians had suffered from mental illness and “that gave me the link between my two ideas.” Being a graduate of the University of Chicago, Auburn set the play in Chicago and made the father a professor there.

For his efforts, Mr. Auburn garnered numerous “Best Play” awards including: The Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Drama League Award.