Michael Frayn Research Articles

Rediscovering Bruegel: Art and History in Michael Frayn’s Headlong

British playwright and novelist Michael Frayn’s 1999 novel Headlong centers on an art historian’s discovery of the lost sixth painting from the collection Months or Seasons that Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel is believed to have painted in 1565. Throughout the novel, driven by a quest to authenticate and possess the painting, the protagonist Martin Clay is engrossed in a thoughtful and thorough examination of Bruegel’s art renowned for busy tableaus of peasants, harvesters, hunters engaged in daily and rural activities. From religious conflicts, biblical conventions to allegorical landscapes, labors of the months within the framework of changing seasons, Bruegel’s artistic milieu has been interpreted and elicited in diverse and opposite ways. For that reason, Clay’s speculations about the political, intellectual and symbolic history behind the painting are not only the substance of the book, but the lengthy and diligent research he takes on also provides historical backdrop of the Netherlands in early sixteenth century, a time of atrocity and oppression as a result of Spanish rule. In view of that, this study aims to examine and understand how Martin’s journey turns into a headlong venture carrying thematic elements found in Bruegel’s works delving into the complexities of human behavior. Frayn not only brings the missing masterpiece to life with relevant descriptions projecting Bruegel’s idiosyncratic style and legacy, he also explicates its iconography-iconology in a political, and art historical context showing affinity with the narrative and artistic traditions of Dutch genre paintings.

MODERN APPROACHES TO TEACHING HOW TO READ FICTION IN THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE

Learning how to read fiction in the original language is an integral part of foreign language teachers training and requires the use of modern methods of blended learning. The purpose of this work is to develop a method of reading the novel “Headlong” by Michael Frayn using the “flipped classroom” technique. As a result, we published a student’s book, the content of which is structured in accordance with the theory of text understanding types. The article focuses on the results of the study.

ТИПЫ ЭКФРАСИСОВ МАЙКЛА ФРЕЙНА В РОМАНЕ «ОДЕРЖИМЫЙ» И ИХ РОЛЬ В ОРГАНИЗАЦИИ ТЕКСТА

The article is devoted to the intermedial analysis of the novel “Headlong” by Michael Frayn. The plot of the novel is an adventure of a connoisseur of art who is looking for a lost painting by a famous Flemish artist. The research focuses on the ekphrastic descriptions of Pieter Bruegel’s paintings in the literary text with the aim of identifying the types of mimetic and non-mimetic ekphrases used in the novel. The text contains ekphrastic descriptions of both real and imaginary works of art, which can be full and complete or short and precise. Different types of ekphrasis contribute to the integrity and authenticity of the plot, its dynamism and thrill. The composition of the complete mimetic and non-mimetic ekphrases is similar and represents the same key issues.

Exploring Authenticity and Meaning in Art: an Analysis of Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices in “Headlong”, Novel by Michael Frayn

The subject of research is the novel “Headlong” by Michael Fraine, published in 1999. The purpose of the study is to study the concepts of authenticity and meaning in art, presented by the author through an analysis of expressive means and stylistic techniques in this novel. The methods used to obtain results include a formal method, a hermeneutic method, psychological and existential methods, and an applied method, since the study was conducted during the teaching of an extensive reading course for students of the 4th year of the Foreign language: two foreign languages specialty. Michael Fraine's “Headlong” offers a thought-provoking exploration of authenticity and meaning not only in art, but also in real life of both the fiction character and the reader. Through the protagonist's quest for a lost painting, the novel challenges conventional notions of authenticity, emphasizing the subjective nature of perception and interpretation. Frayn underscores the role of context in shaping the meaning of art and highlights the complex interplay between art and society. Ultimately, “Headlong” invites readers to reflect on the intricate relationship between authenticity, meaning, and the ever-evolving nature of art. This essay explores how Frayn's skillful use of language, narrative structure, and character development enhances the exploration of authenticity and meaning in art, shedding light on the complex interplay between perception, interpretation, and the subjective nature of artistic value. The obtained results are of applied character, since they can be used for inclusion in educational syllabi in the English language and Literature of Great Britain, or used to illustrate events in art circles or courses and/or to organize extracurricular events, such as debates about the role of art or about the boundaries between reality and perception.

Narrative Quantum Cosmology in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen

Abstract Twentieth-century drama has made the stage a site for reflecting on science. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, considered by many as one of the most striking contributions to “science plays,” portrays the elusive yet crucial short meeting of the two pillars of quantum physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in the autumn of 1941. The play employs ‘real’ scientists as characters that recurrently refer to and explain their scientific ideas such as uncertainty and complementarity, recognized as the Copenhagen Interpretation. Adopting the approach of possible worlds theory, this article analyses the concept of ‘possible worlds’ as projected in Copenhagen in light of the idea that physics itself has proposed a proliferation of parallel universes (multiverse). In fact, our main thesis is that the play offers an alternate history and brings about a myriad of counterfactuals that are tested as “drafts.”

Revision, Analogy, and the “Problem of Reality” in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and Human Touch

Published eight years after the premiere of Copenhagen, his celebrated play about atomic physics, Michael Frayn’s Human Touch (2006) reflects on the epistemological and phenomenological implications of human experience, syntax, and quantum mechanics. Summarily, Frayn posits that reality’s fundamental indeterminacy makes thought, language, identity, culture, and experience possible at all. The book echoes more than Copenhagen’s themes, however, and the pair’s structural similarities invite readers to rethink Copenhagen as a piece of philosophical theatre. The play foregrounds the process of drafting and redrafting, and it stands as a draft of the ideas in the book that soon followed. The book follows suit as it drafts and redrafts its central question through its prodigious length. In conversation with Human Touch, we can read Copenhagen as an exploration of our ability to forge connections between otherwise disparate features of reality (including quantum mechanics). More crucially, Copenhagen demonstrates the pivotal role that theatre plays in the indeterminate epistemology that Frayn espouses in Human Touch. In doing so, Copenhagen embodies an earlier draft of the epistemology Frayn later explicates in the book. In other words, Copenhagen represents a rare example of a thinker working through philosophical ideas on stage before committing them to an argument.

The Art of Uncertainty: A Scrutiny in Theatre of Michael Frayn

The Art of Uncertainty: A Scrutiny in Theatre of Michael Frayn

Theatrical translation or theatrical adaptation? Staging Noises Off in Italy

The distinction between translation and adaptation is generally dependent on the amount of rewriting and independence of the target text, but the intercultural nature of theatrical translation and its varied addressees (actors and target audience) proves that drama requires a flexible approach to the process conducive to the target play. This article aims to demonstrate that the dramaturgical decisions related to the target play influence the balance between translation and adaptation in stage translation, which pursues a target-oriented approach. Rumori Fuori Scena, the Italian version of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, serves as the case study for a contrastive analysis that includes the source text and the performed play. Considering that the practitioners’ experience is of utmost importance to fully understand the expectations on the translation and the identity of the target play: the practitioner’s perspective unlocks new aspects relating to the borders between theatrical adaptation and translation.

"What I Remember Clearly from our Conversations": Memory as the Method of Power Struggle in Michael Frayn s Copenhagen

"What I Remember Clearly from our Conversations": Memory as the Method of Power Struggle in Michael Frayn s Copenhagen

Crystallography on Stage: Presenting the Concepts and History Dramatically

From Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faust (1604) to Oxygen (2000) by Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann, there is a long tradition of dramatic work related to science and scientist. More recently, the enormously successful Copenhagen (1998) by Michael Frayn's and a wave of new plays about scientific themes such as Arcadia, Wit, After Darwin and others have created new dramatic phenomenon. These works are not the conventional documentary-dramas about scientific discovery but engaging plays. A recent book entitled Science on Stage (1) reviews more than a hundred plays presenting scientific themes on stage. Beginning in 2005, a play was developed with the objective of conveying the concepts and history of crystallography to large audiences in a dramatic setting. The script centers on the mural drawn by Picasso in 1950 at the flat of the iconic crystallographer J.D. Bernal, during his historical meeting with the world-famous artist. The main characters discuss the concepts of crystallography and explore the interconnections between Science and Art. The script has had several readings in academic settings (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2007; Barcelona, Zaragoza, Spain, 2008). The première staged reading of the play was produced at Argonne National Laboratory on May 4th2008. Details can be found at http://www.aps.anl.gov/Users/Meeting/2008/Picasso/index.php. The project has developed from an initial script entitled `Picasso Meets Crystallography' emphasizing the concepts and history of crystallography to the more dramatically-rich version entitled `Bernal's Picasso', which explores the relationships between Science and Art and is intended for wider theater audiences. The presentation will discus the history of the project with vignettes of previous performances, its multiple facets and its future development as a novel way to convey crystallography to wider audiences, and to explore in a dramatic context the role of crystallography in today's society

What’s Copenhagen Got To Do With Chemistry Class? Using a Play to Teach the History and Practice of Science

Through the reading, study, and performance of Copenhagen, a play by Michael Frayn, chemistry students see the application of nuclear chemistry content, acquire a better understanding of the continuum from scientific research to technology design, and also become aware of the many and varied interrelationships of science with history and humanity. This article describes a method to use the play in a high school chemistry classroom as a vehicle for cross-disciplinary integration of chemistry content through the context of history and the development of scientists as people. Students experience the lives of two scientists, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, as they negotiate their academic and personal relationships surrounding basic atomic research during the historical time period surrounding World War II and the creation of the atom bomb. In student group discussions, tangents of discourse move from the various scientists’ personalities and the iterative nature of scientific research, to questions of politics, ethics, and morality in a historic context as they discuss, debate, and decide upon ways to present the play so their peers will understand and appreciate the experience.

Q&A: The playful dramatist

Author and playwright Michael Frayn explores the wellsprings of creativity through farce, philosophy and the history of science. His eclectic output ranges from non-fiction books such as The Human Touch (2006) to plays including Noises Off (1982) and Copenhagen (1998) — which explores the 1941 meeting between quantum physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, with Frayn imagining their discussions on the morality of working on nuclear weapons. With his latest novel, Skios, coming out next month, he talks about determinism and the paradox of existence.

Operation Epsilon : Science, History, and Theatrical Narrative

Operation Epsilon:Science, History, and Theatrical Narrative Alan Brody (bio) In 1945, shortly after VE day, the Anglo-American forces rounded up ten renowned nuclear scientists and interned them at Farm Hall, an estate near Cambridge, England. All the rooms on the estate had been bugged. The conversations of the scientists were recorded on wax discs and translated. Information regarding both the scientists' research and anything else that might be of interest to the Anglo-American military was sent to Washington and London. The internship lasted from July to January. During that time, America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of fission. The men's responses to those events are a part of the transcript. The entire operation had the code name Operation Epsilon. The full transcripts were declassified only in 1993. They were published in England under the title Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts and in the states as Hitler's Uranium Club, superbly edited by Jeremy Bernstein. Besides Hahn, the other scientists were Werner Heisenberg, Max Von Laue, Karl Friederich Von Weizsacker, Paul Harteck, Karl Wirtz, Kurt Diebner Horst Korsching, and Erich Bagge. Bagge and Diebner were the only members of the Nazi party. There is a brief allusion to these events in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, but I had first heard of it elsewhere. Over the past six years at MIT a group of scientists and area playwrights, all interested in the recent trend of plays about science, have been meeting informally over wine and cheese. There is no set agenda for any of these meetings—except for the wine and cheese—but every session turns out to be a lively discussion, sometimes about developments in science, sometimes about theater, most often, ultimately, about both. We call it Science on Stage, but informally, we call it our "salon." Out of these sessions came a number of theater pieces, including a new adaptation of Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, Frontier Theory, which was a collaboration between playwright and actress Rebekkah Maggore and Astrophysicist [End Page 253] James Battat, as well as both of my own plays, Small Infinities (about Sir Isaac Newton) and Operation Epsilon (2008). The transcripts themselves are rough going for a layman, partly because of the density of the nuclear science, even more because the translations themselves are fairly wooden. Still, the events were there, the situation itself compelling and potentially very rich. Bernstein's notes were helpful with the science; so were my scientist colleagues. I had the history, if not yet the story. I had the people, if not yet the characters. There were some internal conflicts running through some sections of the transcripts. I also had some potential set pieces, the news of the bomb and the men's responses to it, the celebration honoring Hahn's Nobel Prize, and the creation of a public memorandum describing the work of the German nuclear scientists who wanted to affirm that they had only been developing a nuclear reactor and never a bomb. The memorandum was especially important. It was a vehicle for salvaging many of the scientists' reputations after having pursued their research under the Third Reich. Working with history like this, you find yourself with a lot of givens. What I didn't yet have was a story. Once I found that, I would be faced with the most crucial question of all for any playwright. How do I tell it? In order to find the story, I explored what this small bit of history meant to me. What was its significance? Why had I been so immediately attracted to the material? I had been haunted by a particular session of Science on Stage when we invited a recent Nobel laureate to join the group that already included at least one other Nobel laureate. Our new guest was a very nice guy and—like all the rest of us—passionate about his work. Someone raised the question of whether there was a moral dimension to pure research. Did the search for knowledge have primacy over every other consideration? Were there circumstances, either in the research itself or...

The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre Melissa Lee The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre. By Katie Mitchell. London: Routledge, 2009; pp. 246. $28.95 paper. In The Director's Craft, Katie Mitchell takes on the daunting task of examining her own artistic practice and distilling years of hard-earned experience into an extremely accessible, step-by-step reference manual for theatre directors. The book is the product of Mitchell's firm belief that directing is a craft that can be taught and learned, practiced and mastered, as opposed to a notion of directing as an innate talent that relies on "a process based on chance rather than skill" (1). The Director's Craft is impressive for its attention to detail, comprehensiveness, and practical approach to being the artistic team leader. The handbook is organized into four parts, the first three of which chronicle the artistic journey from page to stage. Each part is divided into chapters, and each chapter into subtopics or steps. For easy reference, a summary of main ideas appears at the end of each step and each chapter is capped with a checklist of the material covered. Throughout the book, she provides personal examples to illustrate her points. Mitchell dedicates almost half her pages to part 1, "Preparing for Rehearsals," an indication that the bulk of a director's work happens prior to actors engaging with text. In her pre-production work, Mitchell seems to adhere to a directorial approach that relies on identifying the simplest explanation for the play's questions. Above all, she is concerned with clear storytelling; all of the steps she outlines in the book are a roadmap for creating behavior onstage that is wholly legible. She warns that personal affinities for themes or characters will create blind spots in a director's preparation, resulting in an unbalanced, unfocused, and confusing end-product. To further illustrate her methodology, she uses Michael Frayn's translation of Chekhov's The Seagull to give concrete examples of her own process for each step. Her discussion of The Seagull is tantalizing and all too brief, but her straightforward, incisive analysis achieves a dual purpose, effectively demonstrating the usefulness of the director's tools she has described and inspiring practitioners to thoughtful and thorough practice. Part 2, "Rehearsals," offers advice on multiple fronts, from "Establishing the Language of Your Process" to "How to Sit in the Rehearsal Room" and "Twelve Golden Rules for Working with Actors." For Mitchell, "the main skills required from the director are patience and long-term thinking" (115)—the goal is to let the production evolve over time. Meticulous preparation of the text allows for focused, efficient use of rehearsal time; any directorial plan should, she insists, remain flexible enough to invite collaboration with actors, whose insights will help the director refine his or her own ideas about the play. This section addresses how to structure rehearsals, how to work with the actors on creating character, how to set up improvisations that will deepen understanding of given circumstances, and how to work on scenes of the play by diagnosing characters' intentions. Mitchell also addresses how to communicate effectively with actors, giving notes in such a way as to effect real and lasting change in their performances. Because production conditions vary, Mitchell offers helpful suggestions on which parts of her process might be compressed or cut altogether to accommodate an abbreviated rehearsal period. Part 3, "Getting into the Theatre and the Public Performances," includes discussions on "How to Work with Your Creative Team during Technical Rehearsal," "How to Manage the Transition from the Rehearsal Room to the Theatre for the Actors," and "Analysing Your Work after the Run Has Ended." Mitchell shares that her "greatest error early on was to worry away at the insoluble problems, often in the area of casting" (198). She counsels that directors must often acknowledge a mistake, especially in casting, and compromise on the outcome. This section also addresses how to give notes during the run, how to handle criticism, and how to self-evaluate. In the fourth and final part, "Context and Sources," Mitchell briefly describes her own training and influences...

The science of telling stories: Evaluating science communication via narratives (RIRC method)

It is quite reasonable to claim that narratives can include, explain and recreate science and that this means of science communication is generally popular. This idea seems to be supported by the fact that many contemporary authors who include science as a theme in their work receive a good reception among the public (at least in Britain). Novels like Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh, Longitude by Dava Sobel and Neuromancer by William Gibson stayed on the best seller lists for weeks. Plays like Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Oxigen by Carl Djerassi and Ronald Hoffmann, Diary of a steak by Deborah Levy as well as Blue heart by Caryl Churchill enjoyed complete sell-outs in London and other cities in Britain. The explanation for this popularity seems to be that narratives are amusing, attractive, and interesting. Therefore, we can maintain that they are popular. But are they also a long-lasting way of transmitting knowledge? But do people remember scientific information conveyed by this means better than they remember the traditional formats like paradigmatic textbooks? These are questions that need to be addressed. The RIRC method compares narrative and paradigmatic ways of communicating scientific information, exploring their effectiveness by comparing memory (learning) for narrative and paradigmatic information. This work provides an interdisciplinary approach and a novel methodology to measure the success of communication using narratives as compared to other text formats. Key words: Science communication, science and narratives, science communication evaluation, RIRC method.

Beyond uncertainty: Heisenberg, quantum physics, and the bomb

Exhaustively detailed yet eminently readable, this is important book.Publishers Weekly, starred review does not so much exculpate Heisenberg as explain him, with a transparency that makes this biography a pleasure to read.Los Angeles Times Well crafted and readable ...[Cassidy] provides a nuanced and compelling account of Heisenberg's life.The Harvard Book Review In 1992, David C. Cassidy's groundbreaking biography of Werner Heisenberg, Uncertainty, was published to resounding acclaim from scholars and critics. Michael Frayn, in Playbill of Broadway production of Copenhagen, referred to it as one of his main sources and the standard work in English. Richard Rhodes (The Making of Atom Bomb) called it the definitive biography of a great and tragic physicist, and Los Angeles Times praised it as an important book. Cassidy has sifted record and brilliantly detailed Heisenberg's actions. No book that has appeared since has rivaled Uncertainty, now out of print, for its depth and rich detail of life, times, and science of this brilliant and controversial figure of twentieth-century physics. Since fall of Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg's role in Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within context of his vast research and tackles vexing questions of a scientist's personal responsibility and guilt when serving abhorrent military regime. David C. Cassidy is author of J. Robert Oppenheimer and American Century, Einstein and Our World, and Uncertainty.

Making the “Unstageable” Stageable: English Rewritings of Chekhov's First Play

This essay examines three adaptations for the English stage of Chekhov's “unstageable” first play. As well as reflecting something of the broader context of the translation and reception of foreign plays in the English theatre, these adaptations are very illuminating on fundamental aspects of English Chekhov tradition, in particular its largely veiled politics. Michael Frayn's Wild Honey, which highlights connexions with Chekhov's later plays and reinscribes cardinal elements of English Chekhov, exemplifies the strategy of domesticating the foreign. In sharp contrast, taking issue with a tradition that sentimentalizes and de-politicizes Chekhov, Trevor Griffiths's Piano reconceives Untitled Play as a political play that comments on contemporary Britain. Meanwhile, David Hare's Platonov, which purports to stick as closely as possible to the original text, ends up, like Wild Honey, reiterating the familiar hallmarks of English Chekhov. The choices made in all three adaptations attest to the fundamentally political nature of the translator's intervention as well as to the translator's contribution not merely to the transmission of culture but to its production.

Making the “Unstageable” Stageable: English Rewritings of Chekhov’s First Play

This essay examines three adaptations for the English stage of Chekhov’s “unstageable” first play. As well as reflecting something of the broader context of the translation and reception of foreign plays in the English theatre, these adaptations are very illuminating on fundamental aspects of English Chekhov tradition, in particular its largely veiled politics. Michael Frayn’s Wild Honey , which highlights connexions with Chekhov’s later plays and reinscribes cardinal elements of English Chekhov, exemplifies the strategy of domesticating the foreign. In sharp contrast, taking issue with a tradition that sentimentalizes and de-politicizes Chekhov, Trevor Griffiths’s Piano reconceives Untitled Play as a political play that comments on contemporary Britain. Meanwhile, David Hare’s Platonov , which purports to stick as closely as possible to the original text, ends up, like Wild Honey , reiterating the familiar hallmarks of English Chekhov. The choices made in all three adaptations attest to the fundamentally political nature of the translator’s intervention as well as to the translator’s contribution not merely to the transmission of culture but to its production.

ART FICTION

Fiction about art reveals a parallel extra‐academy, extra‐museum art history. This essay examines how three novels, all published in 1999, fictionalize early modern Netherlandish painters and paintings. Tracey Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring is ‘art‐historical fiction’ that uses real paintings to craft a fictional Vermeer; Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue is ‘provenance fiction’ that brings to life the history of ownership of a fictional painting by Vermeer; and Michael Frayn's Headlong, a tale of a modern‐day amateur art historian's quixotic quest for a long lost picture by Pieter Bruegel, is ‘art‐history fiction’. These novels rely on strategies of Dutch and Flemish genre painting to craft stories of ordinary lives that are made extraordinary by art. Held up as mirrors to our scholarly practices, they confront us with the popular ramifications of recent approaches to works of art and their makers.

Duet for one, Almeida Theatre, London (January 22nd to March 14th 2009)

Peter Brook, the theatre director, once told me in an interview that he had spent 10 years attempting to bring science to the stage. It was difficult, he said, because, at the level of the lab bench, science is essentially reductionist and devoid of emotion and drama. He thought of treating the theme biographically, but decided that scientists are not interested in themselves apart from their science (a notion contradicted, I think, in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen where the ethical and political conflict between the atomic physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg during World War II is portrayed). ![Graphic][1] In the end Brook decided to dramatize neurological illness, after being impressed with Oliver Sacks's book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat . The reason, he said, was that in neurological case histories one sees the ‘wayward molecules meeting the essential human being’. The production that ensued— The Man Who —was a remarkable dramatization of essential humanity surviving and even thriving despite serious neurological conditions. The play ran into problems in rehearsal, as it happened, for Brook was insistent that neurological symptoms, such as visual agnosia, should be understood at a deep and highly accurate level by the actors and director. In the case of The Man Who , he was dissatisfied with the cast's ability to render accurately the different neurological conditions based on the available symptomatology in the book. I found myself recalling Brook's struggles with dramatized neurology while watching a performance of Duet for One , … [1]: awp057i1