Tycho&Kepler
Feb. 23rd, 2004 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidThursday night I went to see Tycho&Kepler put on by the Industrial Theatre, in the Leverett Old House Library (ie, a Harvard dorm space). It was developed by the group, rather than one playwright.
The space is a partially underground rather lofty room, with a stage that's merely a step up from the floor. There are entrances at each corner, in addition to the two main exits, reached by stairs in the room (I have no idea if it's wheelchair accessible or not).
The set for the play included the main stage area, most of the floor, and some of the stairway as well, with the audience in two rows on either side, facing inward. Around the room were tall, tall blackboards (I assume someone got to have fun with blackboard paint) with all sorts of astronomical and astrological figuring on them. There were also one or two 'astronomical' instruments, a few chairs, a table, and a lectern with an open tome atop it. It felt physically sparse, but perfectly sufficient for the show.
The lighting was fine, with the usual sorts of spotlights at appropriate moments. In other words, solid, not creative.
The sound, on the other hand, was more interesting, with a bell being chimed at intervals, and a woman 'voicing over' certain sentences that seemed to return again and again.
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), from a rich Danish noble family, dedicated his life and considerable resources to compiling planetary positions ten times more accurate than previously recorded. After some early successes, and in gratitude for having his life saved by Tycho's uncle, the King of Denmark gave Tycho tremendous resources - an island with many families on it, and money to build an observatory. Tycho built massive instruments to observe the stars, taking the most accurate pre-telescopic measurements. His aim was to confirm his own picture of the universe, which was that the Earth was at rest, the sun went around the Earth and the planets all went around the sun - an intermediate picture between Ptolemy and Copernicus.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was born into a once prosperous Catholic family in southwest Germany. Sickly as a child (and throughout his life), he also showed unusual intelligence and studied under the astronomy professor Maestlin at the University of Tuebingen. Although Kepler's geometric scheme for the placement of the planets gained him some notice, his public belief in Copernicus' cosmology slowed his academic career. Facing religious persecution, he left his home to work with Tycho in 1600. When Tycho died the next year, Kepler took his data and worked with it for nine years, finally concluding, reluctantly, that his geometric scheme was wrong. In it's place, he found three enduring laws of planetary motion that paved the way for Newton's establishment of universal gravitation.
The play revolves around the two astronomers, mostly before and during their shortened partnership. The third actor plays a variety of other roles, including a drover, a servant, a bishop, and Kepler's mother, while the fourth actor plays a modern academic of some sort. He is sometimes in the background, sometimes not, a touch of current trends (not only astronomically, but in interview styles as well). It's a play of cycles, ideas coming around again and again, showing how this time, maybe this time, there will be a breakthrough, not only finally getting good data, but also in a theory that accounts for all the data as well. I enjoyed seeing the astronomical/religious battles over the Earth's place in the universe.
The space is a partially underground rather lofty room, with a stage that's merely a step up from the floor. There are entrances at each corner, in addition to the two main exits, reached by stairs in the room (I have no idea if it's wheelchair accessible or not).
The set for the play included the main stage area, most of the floor, and some of the stairway as well, with the audience in two rows on either side, facing inward. Around the room were tall, tall blackboards (I assume someone got to have fun with blackboard paint) with all sorts of astronomical and astrological figuring on them. There were also one or two 'astronomical' instruments, a few chairs, a table, and a lectern with an open tome atop it. It felt physically sparse, but perfectly sufficient for the show.
The lighting was fine, with the usual sorts of spotlights at appropriate moments. In other words, solid, not creative.
The sound, on the other hand, was more interesting, with a bell being chimed at intervals, and a woman 'voicing over' certain sentences that seemed to return again and again.
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), from a rich Danish noble family, dedicated his life and considerable resources to compiling planetary positions ten times more accurate than previously recorded. After some early successes, and in gratitude for having his life saved by Tycho's uncle, the King of Denmark gave Tycho tremendous resources - an island with many families on it, and money to build an observatory. Tycho built massive instruments to observe the stars, taking the most accurate pre-telescopic measurements. His aim was to confirm his own picture of the universe, which was that the Earth was at rest, the sun went around the Earth and the planets all went around the sun - an intermediate picture between Ptolemy and Copernicus.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was born into a once prosperous Catholic family in southwest Germany. Sickly as a child (and throughout his life), he also showed unusual intelligence and studied under the astronomy professor Maestlin at the University of Tuebingen. Although Kepler's geometric scheme for the placement of the planets gained him some notice, his public belief in Copernicus' cosmology slowed his academic career. Facing religious persecution, he left his home to work with Tycho in 1600. When Tycho died the next year, Kepler took his data and worked with it for nine years, finally concluding, reluctantly, that his geometric scheme was wrong. In it's place, he found three enduring laws of planetary motion that paved the way for Newton's establishment of universal gravitation.
The play revolves around the two astronomers, mostly before and during their shortened partnership. The third actor plays a variety of other roles, including a drover, a servant, a bishop, and Kepler's mother, while the fourth actor plays a modern academic of some sort. He is sometimes in the background, sometimes not, a touch of current trends (not only astronomically, but in interview styles as well). It's a play of cycles, ideas coming around again and again, showing how this time, maybe this time, there will be a breakthrough, not only finally getting good data, but also in a theory that accounts for all the data as well. I enjoyed seeing the astronomical/religious battles over the Earth's place in the universe.