There have been a number of plays in recent years that take up science as a topic. But most of them bury the science behind personalities. But why not put science or math upfront? “Doing mathematics can often feel like the creative process of a theatre improvisation. You set up a tableau with conditions for collisions of ideas and let the thing run. Very often it gets nowhere – but sometimes there is a dynamic created that clicks. Like the rules of a theatre game, the conditions push you in extraordinary unexpected directions that too much freedom would stifle.”