Scientific Discovery Drama and the Genre of a Science Play in the Context of Science Popularization (Based on C. Djerassi, R. Hoffmann’s Play Oxygen, 2001 and C. Djerassi’s Play Calculus, 2004)

Theatre has always been an important mechanism of knowledge dissemination; in the time of expert scientific theories and innovative technologies the task of science popularization is successfully performed by science theatre. Science theatre has a great number of cases and genres of a science play and is often a focus of interdisciplinary research. Historically, the theatre witnessed the interconnection of natural philosophy and literature; nowadays science theatre uses a variety of multimodal possibilities in line with art-science phenomenon. Also, the problems science theatre raises are of equal value both for society and for individuals. At the same time, the neurocognitive trend in the theatre contributes to the choice of human-related themes as well as the format of a science performance or a postdramatic theatre experiment. The article explores the phenomenon of science theatre in its dialectics of the social and individual, the scientific and imaginative. The literature review shows that the living organism of the theatre is much more complex than one single classification of a science play can reflect. Our purpose is to address the genre characteristics of a science play and the problem of its classifications in the modern cultural context and major directions of research. We pay special attention to Carl Djerassi’s perspective on the science play and its major features and illustrate his didactic concept of “science-in-theatre” by analyzing two plays that have not been previously translated into Russian: Oxygen (2001) and Calculus (2004). Both plays center on the historical personality of a scientist in his struggle for priority in a fundamental scientific discovery, whether it is oxygen or calculus. The path to the recognition of a scientific discovery turns out to be a test of humanity; at the same time, the principle of historical documentation and the reliability of scientific knowledge coexists with the artistic principle of showing the hero-scientist in a situation of a moral and ethical choice. The concept “science-in-theatre”, suggested by Carl Djerassi, can be debated; the article offers alternative classifications of science plays based on the historical, communicative, and thematic principles.

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