Quantum Theater

Classical physics tells us that entropy—a fancy word for chaos—increases over time.
As the universe expands, so does its complexity. We see evidence of this principle all around us. New York City is a chaotic disaster. People vibrate on its streets, peanut butter stuck to the side of a blender. And yet, in the 1880s—the era of the last three seasons of HBO’s The Gilded Age—New York is portrayed as an idyllic, even calm, country village. Cows graze in Central Park, and traffic consists of two carriages and a unicycle at a four-way stop.

Modern life does feel like it’s becoming more chaotic. I don’t remember anyone in the ’90s “multitasking.” Back then, staring into the microwave or turning the volume up on the car stereo were about as risky as technological distractions got. I don’t long for 25-foot corded kitchen telephones, but I do wish for the freedom—and the deniability—to leave my phone at home sometimes.

At the risk of sounding like a grandpa, I’ll admit: I just want to sit still. Even when I meditate, my brain gravitates toward my to-do list. Do meditation exercises… check. I miss staring into the microwave. Can you imagine having nothing else to do but watch your pizza reheat?

Contrary to the rest of the known universe, however, theater seems to lose entropy over time. If you ask a theater person how rehearsal is going, the answer is always, “it’s a mess.” Theater is born from chaos: a big bang of people, words, and ideas rocketing in every direction. But as opening night nears, the parts pull together as if drawn by irresistible gravity. And then, for a brief moment in the cosmos—on the infinite edge of the event horizon—the story is told (for better or worse), as though it had always been there, with no trace of its chaotic creation.

Shakespeare wrote his plays over 400 years ago. Like starlight traveling millions of years to reach us, they endure. Acting styles have changed and theater has grown more technological—but the stories themselves hold steady. Right now, somewhere in the world, an actor is brooding across the stage as Hamlet, asking the question: “To be, or not to be.”

Interestingly, Shakespeare never answers Hamlet’s question. Instead, he ends the play much as he began it, never telling the audience how to feel about its title character or the circumstances in which he ends up. What Shakespeare understood—but never explained to his mopey prince—is that theater and art defy the laws of physics. They live on the quantum level, where anything is possible. Hamlet’s fate isn’t binary—to exist or not exist, like a 1 or a 0. Shakespeare leaves the ending of the play to us and our imaginations. Hamlet is therefore superpositioned in the cosmos: being, not being, or being and not being all at the same time. How beautifully still…

Hold on—someone is texting me, the doorbell just rang, and I can’t find the remote to mute CNN. Alas… “by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.”

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