The infinite imagination of maths

A scene from <i>A Disappearing Number</i>. Photo / Supplied.

Like many people, mathematics doesn't come naturally to Simon McBurney. Growing up in the 1960s, it was one of his least popular subjects at school. But nearly four decades later, it is at the heart of A Disappearing Number, a dazzling multimedia production that was first screened by the 53-year-old actor and director's theatre company Complicite in 2007.

Revolving around the real-life relationship between revolutionary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and Cambridge academic G.H. Hardy, it will be performed in Auckland next week as part of the National Theatre's Live series.

"I was terrible at maths and I dreaded going to classes and sitting the exams," he recalls with a laugh. "I always thought of maths as something rigid and set so if a teacher gave me a problem, I knew there could only be one answer. I was intimidated by that, as it seemed like there was a list of things that were right and a list of things that were wrong. It was a world with which I had no relationship so one of the things that interested me when I began working on this piece was that it was like an unknown country I had no map for."

McBurney consulted Music of the Primes author Marcus du Sautoy, who highlighted the similarities between mathematics and the arts. "I basically started taking lessons with him and he worked out the various mathematical problems that are in the play," he says. "I gradually realised that mathematicians who are working on the edge of mathematics, where maths is at its most experimental, are very much like artists. They don't know what the answer is or where they're going so they have to use their imagination in exactly the same way as a painter or a poet does. It was a revelation for me to think of maths as simply a way of creating patterns because, if you're a theatre-maker, you're also doing that."

Born in India in 1887, Ramanujan had no formal training but he formulated several key equations, including the infinite series, an endless sequence of sums that contemporary mathematician Ruth Minnen (Saskia Reeves) recites in the play's impressive opening scene. "The mathematics she writes on the board is ab-solutely correct," says McBurney. "She only knows her lines as an actor so she has to convince not just lay people but also mathematicians that she knows what she's talking about."

According to Hardy, Ramanujan was in the same league as Isaac Newton and Archimedes. However, he never received the recognition he deserved in his lifetime. "It's almost a rags-to-riches story of this very poor Indian mathematician who literally had no money at all," says McBurney. "He was living in Madras and didn't know how he was going to get out of poverty. He couldn't afford to go to university so he sent his mathematical discoveries to various British mathematicians, most of whom instantly rejected him. But finally his letter landed on the table of G.H. Hardy, who was perhaps the greatest British mathematician of the age. After reading his results, he realised that Ramanujan was a genius and was determined to bring him over to England."

The pair worked together in Cambridge for four years before Ramanujan returned to India, where he tragically died in 1920 at the age of 32. "It's about mathematics but it's also a very human story, which is not just about the relationship between two men but also two very different cultures," says McBurney. "And with the colonial past and an expected future, which is then cut off."

McBurney contrasts Hardy and Ramanujan's academic partnership with the burgeoning romance between Ruth Minnen and American-Asian businessman Al Cooper (Firdous Bamji).

"In having a modern parallel to the 1914 storyline, you create a friction between the two which brings a spark of life to the play," he says. "You're encouraged not to think of it as a remarkable event that happened nearly 100 years ago but as something that has a resonance today, particularly to an immigrant Indian population living in Britain. Ramanujan's experience of exile is not just confined to that time as it is something that everybody experiences today."

Indeed, A Disappearing Number's exploration of migration is just as topical in New Zealand. "Exile is a theme that is common to every country of the world," says McBurney. "People now move in different directions more than at any other time in history so this story becomes even more relevant. But it's also about identity and where do we come from."


Performance:

What: A Disappearing Number: National Theatre Live

Where and when: Bridgeway and Rialto Theatres, October 28-Nov 13