proof
Resources
A 2001 PBS Newshour interview with Auburn after he won the Pulitzer: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june01/auburn_04-20.html
(Can watch video from site)
Mathematical Association of America summary of an interview with David Auburn; contains biographical info and some math information: http://www.maa.org/features/proof.html
Here’s a very basic and sound “study guide” to Proof by a professor at Bates College:
http://www.thepublictheatre.org/education/study_guides/2002-03/Proof.html
His questions are pretty basic and start with readers and their life experiences, rather than the text, but some could be used as constructive starting points to deeper discussions.
For those wishing instead to work from the text toward general conclusions a bit more, here are some ideas for discussion. The play is brief enough and accessible enough that students should be able to identify passages that might support discussion of the following issues. If students make general claims, send them to the text by asking them, “Where do you see that? Is there a scene that supports that reading?” You might, at some point, actually talk about textual evidence as “proof” – and do a sort of meta-textual reflection on how the play might be understood to be about the very kind of intellectual exchanges you are having here in the classroom.
Discussion ideas:
- “Genius,” hard work, or some combination? What does the play tell us about knowledge? About the relation of deep knowledge about a subject and self-knowledge? About what is knowable?
- The conflation of genius and mental illness in popular culture. What does Catherine fear she will inherit from her father? What does she inherit from her father? What is it you get from your parents; how much are you defined by them positively and negatively?
- “Difference” more generally – how does genius and mental illness in turn mark the father as different and “outside”? How is Catherine also marked by this? Why does this matter later when the proof is discovered?
- Does Catherine’s gender matter? Would the play be different if it was about a son instead of a daughter?
- A child’s responsibility to a parent and vice versa
- What does the play tell us about what it means to “grow up”? How are ethical relations with others an important part of that?
- Filiation vs. affiliation – that is, biological relationships (filiation) in contrast to relationships that are chosen. Claire? Hal? The father?
- What is the relationship between stasis and change in the play?
- What is the relationship between the external and the internal, between appearance and “truth”? How is Catherine’s mathematical proof an expression of her creativity ? How is it also an expression of her isolation?
- Certainty – how is math interested in “truth” and the verifiable? Why might that be comforting to someone like Catherine? How is it comforting in a different way for Claire?
- How are Catherine and Claire different from each other? How are they alike? Are they sympathetic characters?
- “Proof” – the title works in many ways in the play…
- the mathematical proof – an explanation of relationships, sequenced carefully.
- What are the limits of proof?
- “proof” as in strength (e.g. alcohol)
- “proof” as in test (e.g. “proofing yeast” reveals whether it is alive or not)
- Sympathy and empathy – why is Claire so brittle and so defensive? What are her fears? Are they justified, given how people react to her?
- Community and isolation. How is her father isolated due to his mental illness? What is her gift to him? What is its cost to her? What does she learn about community and identity? How is Claire also marked in some way by her upbringing and their quirky father?
- Work and play. (Math and the band.) How do they go together?
- What is the place of intellectual life for these people? In other words, why do they like math so much? What does it promise to do?
Final scene when she discusses proof with Hal. How might we read this as a love scene? How is the “proof” – in its elegance, precision, and intensity – an intimate map of Catherine’s interior… an interior that she’s hidden in her prickliness earlier in the play and in her life? How is sharing it with Hal the first step toward something? (Why does she give him the proof in the first place?) Dare we say it: Math is sexy!
FYI: Summaries and basic (and at times misleading!) discussions of Proof that students might look at:
http://www.enotes.com/proof/
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-proofauburn/