Adding it up Trinity finds the human soul of Proof by Bill Rodriguez

What is it about Proof that critics and audiences have found so compelling? Only the second full-length play that David Auburn wrote, it was handed not only a Tony but also the Pulitzer for drama after it opened off-Broadway three years ago.

The troupe at Trinity Repertory Company has been trying to figure out in rehearsals why the play has fascinated theatergoers, as it prepared for the September 5 to October 12 run in the downstairs theater.

The title refers first of all to a mathematical proof that figures crucially in the plot, but this is not a play that uses arcane discussion to pump up the intellectual wattage, as in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen or Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. No, what shines through here is a simpler story of human relationships.

Proof takes place on a back porch, not in a lecture hall. In flashback and in the present, the story involves the birthday of Catherine (Nehassaiu deGannes), a 25-year-old who has put her own life on hold in recent years to take care of her father, Robert (Timothy Crowe). He is a mathematical genius whose mental illness, everyone assumes, has put his creativity on hold. Into the picture comes Catherine’s solicitous older sister Claire (Phyllis Kaye) and Robert’s protégé Hal (Mauro Hantman). Claire has well-intended but disruptive opinions on what Catherine should do with her life. Hal’s intentions may be romantic, despite Catherine’s suspicions that he might be there to steal her father’s notebooks. Sorting through the papers, the graduate student makes an astonishing discovery that will change the lives and relationships of them all.

Proof is directed by Brian McEleney, who took some time after a rehearsal recently to discuss the challenges of staging the play.

Q: In your director’s notes in the program, you say that you don’t get mathematics. Did that inhibit you at first?

A: One of the ways into the play is to say that supposedly this is a play about mathematics and yet it’s not. "And yet it’s not" is really what’s interesting about it. He could have placed it in that world and it could have been about that, like Copenhagen is, but he didn’t. He put it on a back porch, he put it in the most domestic of settings. There’s a reason for that. It’s not an accident.

The human questions are much more important and are informed by, placed in relation to, the mathematical. That was my way into it — answering that question, "Why is it on the back porch?"

I did a lot of thinking about the play beforehand. It seems to be headed in one direction in the first act. It seems that this is going to be about math, about those big questions — eternity and order and chaos, all those things that math is about. But in the second act, it’s really not, it’s really about the personal. How to make sense of that, how to negotiate so that the descent into the personal isn’t a disappointment has been interesting.

Q: Are there concerns in the play that could easily be lost in a production?

A: There are whole streams of proofs in the play. I love the title of the play because it’s literally about that proof, but it’s also about how do you prove yourself in the world? One of the things that I was thinking of that’s a big issue for the play and my way into it was: We do this as artists, too. We spend a month in our rehearsal room, and then comes the day when we have to go out and say, "This is what we’ve done." We have to prove that what we’ve done is worthy. We put it in front of you guys in the press and say, "What is this thing?" And it’s always excruciating.

Madness is an issue in this play. And the question is, where does the madness come from? Does it come from always having to be competitive in the world? Does it come from always having to think outside the box? Does it come from, the older you get always having to try to be young?

Q: So mathematics is in the service of these relationships. Was doing the play harder with this intellectual mind-set of mathematicians, in terms of clarifying things to the audience?

A: Being about math, one of the things here is that math is in fact provable. We can go from A to B to C. It may take centuries to do, but ultimately it is possible. I think one of the things he says in this play is that in human relationships, there is no such thing. You have to rely on trust, you have to rely on love, you have to rely on belief — there is no proof of love.

Q: Copenhagen was here last season, Proof now. What is there about the strictures of science that fascinates playwrights and directors? The challenge of dealing with the abstract?

A: Science is making such incredible, monumental discoveries. There’s this sense that we could find the answers. What the plays keep coming back to is that there are no answers. We keep thinking that if we can just get that human genome down we’ll be able to fix everything. You can discover all the nuclear fission you want, and a human being still has to press a button. It comes down to a human question that has nothing to do with science.