By Linda McClane
The award-winning drama “Proof” opens April 14 at Amelia Community Theatre. The discovery of a mathematical equation is a central theme of this intriguing play by David Auburn, but the heart of the story is the human experience and all the complications that come with being part of a family.
“Proof” is set on the back porch of a house in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. It’s an intimate setting in which the audience may feel like it is eavesdropping on all the backyard conversations. Robert, a brilliant mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, raised his two daughters in this house. Daughter Catherine left college and returned home to be her father’s caregiver when he became delusional at the end of his life. She fears that while she may have inherited her father’s gifts, she may also have inherited his mental illness.
Her sister Claire wants to sell the house and bring Catherine to New York to live with her.
Meanwhile, Catherine has given Hal, a former graduate student of her father’s, permission to go through her father’s papers. Among notebooks of nonsense and scribbling, Hal finds a mathematical proof of great significance. Who is the actual author of the work, and can the author rightfully claim it? Is there “proof?”
Proof opened on Broadway in 2000 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.
Show performances are at 7:30 p.m. on April 14-15, 20-22, 27-29 and at 2 p.m. on April 16 and 23 at 207 Cedar St. Tickets are $25 for adults and $10 for students through college, available at www.AmeliaCommunityTheatre.org and by calling (904) 261-6749. The box office is open from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on Wednesdays through Fridays and 90 minutes before curtain on show dates.