Photograph 51 Read online

  PHOTOGRAPH 51

  Anna Ziegler

  PHOTOGRAPH 51

  OBERON BOOKS

  LONDON

  WWW.OBERONBOOKS.COM

  First published in 2015 by Oberon Books Ltd

  521 Caledonian Road, London N7 9RH

  Tel: +44 (0) 20 7607 3637 / Fax: +44 (0) 20 7607 3629

  e-mail: [email protected]

  www.oberonbooks.com

  Copyright © Anna Ziegler, 2015

  Anna Ziegler is hereby identified as author of this play in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted her moral rights.

  All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before rehearsal to The Gersh Agency, 41 Madison Avenue, 31st Floor, NY, NY 10010 USA Att: Seth Glewen. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 9781783199358

  EPUB ISBN: 9781783199365

  Cover design and photograph of Nicole Kidman by Dewynters

  Printed, bound and converted

  by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

  Visit www.oberonbooks.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

  For Will, and for Elliot, my balance

  Contents

  Characters

  Chapters

  Acknowledgements

  This play was developed with the generous assistance of the following organizations and individuals: Mary Resing and Active Cultures Theatre; William Carden, Graeme Gillis and The Ensemble Studio Theatre; Doron Weber and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Andy Polk and The Cape Cod Theatre Project; Simon Levy, Aria Alpert and The Fountain Theatre; Evan Cabnet; Ari Roth, Shirley Serotsky and Theater J; Jerry Manning and The Seattle Repertory Theatre.

  Special thanks go to Linsay Firman, Daniella Topol and Braden Abraham, whose singular visions of this play led to productions as different as they were enthralling.

  The deepest gratitude to Nicole Kidman, Michael Grandage and James Bierman, who felt this story deserved a bigger stage and then made it happen, and so beautifully.

  As always, thanks to my family – my parents, my brothers, my husband, my son, and my grandfather, the incomparable Bobby Lewis.

  And a final thanks to the real scientists behind the characters depicted here. Each opened his or her eyes in the darkness and brought something new out into the light. Lastly – it must be said – the incredible Rosalind Franklin’s life lends itself to drama in part because it ended so tragically — would that this had not been the case.

  Characters

  ROSALIND FRANKLIN

  a scientist in her 30s

  MAURICE WILKINS

  a scientist in his 30s or 40s

  RAY GOSLING

  a scientist in his 20s

  DON CASPAR

  a scientist in his 20s or 30s

  JAMES WATSON

  a scientist in his early 20s

  FRANCIS CRICK

  a scientist in his 30s or 40s

  Settings

  Many and various. The simpler the set, the more fluidly the action can move forward.

  Author’s Note

  This play is based on the story of the race to the double helix in England in the years between 1951 and 1953, but is a work of fiction. I have altered timelines, facts and events, and recreated characters for dramatic purposes.

  A slash (/) indicates overlapping dialogue.

  The play should be performed straight through, without intermission.

  Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler received its UK Premiere in London on 5th September 2015 at the Noël Coward Theatre, produced by the Michael Grandage Company.

  Cast (in order of speaking)

  ROSALIND FRANKLIN Nicole Kidman

  MAURICE WILKINS Stephen Campbell Moore

  JAMES WATSON Will Attenborough

  FRANCIS CRICK Edward Bennett

  DON CASPAR Patrick Kennedy

  RAY GOSLING Joshua Silver

  Understudies

  ROSALIND FRANKLIN Lorna Stuart

  MAURICE WILKINS/ William Troughton

  FRANCIS CRICK/

  DON CASPAR/

  JAMES WATSON/ Patrick Walshe McBride

  RAY GOSLING

  Creative team

  Director Michael Grandage

  Set and Costume Designer Christopher Oram

  Lighting Designer Neil Austin

  Composer and Sound Designer Adam Cork

  This play is the winner of the 2008 STAGE International Script Competition and was developed, in part, through the University of California, Santa Barbara’s STAGE Project by the Professional Artists Lab (Nancy Kawalek, Director) and the California NanoSystems Institute.

  Photograph 51 was developed by The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project and received its New York premiere at the Ensemble Studio Theatre on October 27, 2010.

  Originally commissioned and produced by Active Cultures, the Vernacular Theatre of Maryland. Opening night on Sunday, February 10, 2008.

  This text went to press before the end of rehearsals so may differ from the final performance.

  Certain things exist outside of time. It was ten years ago, it was this morning…It happened in the past and it was always happening. It happened every single minute of the day…

  *

  He felt like he was seeing greatness, like he was in the room watching Watson and Crick put the final touches on their model of DNA, or maybe he was seeing Rosalind Franklin with her magnificent X-rays. Wasn’t it the girl, after all, who had actually found the key to life?

  Ann Patchett, Run

  As scientists understand very well, personality has always been an inseparable part of their styles of inquiry and a potent, if unacknowledged, factor in their results. Indeed, no art or popular entertainment is so carefully built as is science upon the individual talents, preferences and habits of its leaders.

  Horace Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation

  (The Lights rise on ROSALIND.)

  ROSALIND: This is what it was like. We made the invisible visible. We could see atoms, not only see them—manipulate them, move them around. We were so powerful. Our instruments felt like extensions of our own bodies. We could see everything, really see it—except, sometimes, what was right in front of us.

  When I was a child I used to draw shapes. Shapes overlapping, like endless Venn diagrams. My parents said, “Rosalind, maybe you should draw people? Don’t you want to draw our family? Our little dog?” I didn’t. I drew patterns of the tiniest repeating structures. In my mind were patterns of the tiniest repeating structures.

  WILKINS: It was a particularly cold winter in London. January 1951.

  ROSALIND: And when I first got to use my father’s camera, I went outside and found four leaves. I arranged them carefully, on the curb. But the photograph I took was not of leaves. You see, nothing is ever just one thing. This was the world, a map of rivers and mountain ranges in endless repetition. And when I told my father I wanted to become a scientist, he said, “Ah. I see.”…Then he said �
��No.”

  WILKINS: And at the same time, in Paris—

  WATSON: Not again, Wilkins. Really?

  WILKINS: In Paris, Rosalind Franklin was saying her goodbyes.

  ROSALIND: (As though addressing a large group of people—her colleagues in Paris; her French is perfect.)

  Oh, vous me flattez plus que je ne mérite.

  (She laughs.)

  But I do appreciate it. I will so miss you all, and the work we’ve done here together. Never have I encountered such fastidiousness coupled with such, yes I’ll say it, joy. I will miss it. And the bread…And the wine…And oh the cheese! But mostly I will miss you.

  (She smiles, a twinkle in her eye, but then, after a moment, puts her hair in a bun.)

  CRICK: (To the audience.) She didn’t want to leave the Laboratoire Central, but she’d just won a fellowship at King’s College London and one didn’t turn down a job at King’s—especially since there was a chance she’d get to work in the field of genetics—

  CASPAR: A field in which the possibilities were…well, they were endless. In which the promise of personal and professional fulfillment was tangible.

  GOSLING: So she wrote a…polite letter to Dr. Wilkins requesting the instruments she’d require:

  ROSALIND: (Writing the letter, all formality.) I require an X-ray generating tube. And a camera specially made so that the temperature inside it can be carefully controlled. Otherwise, the solution will change during its exposure, and Dr. Wilkins you know as well as I do that that just won’t do. Finally, if at all possible, I’d like to know when this order will be placed so that, if need be, I can request a few minor modifications. Yours sincerely, Dr. Rosalind Franklin.

  WILKINS: Dear Miss Franklin, you are ever so…cordial. But I must warn you—we at King’s are very serious. So serious, in fact, and intent on being at “the cutting edge” as they say, that we will be moving your research into another area entirely.

  (WILKINS and ROSALIND at King’s together.)

  ROSALIND: I beg your pardon?

  WILKINS: Yes, instead of proteins you will be working on deciphering the structure of DNA.

  ROSALIND: Is that so.

  WILKINS: You see, I recently took X-ray photos of a particular sample of DNA that came out remarkably well, showing that it is unmistakably crystalline in shape. Therefore it now seems evident that King’s needs to push forward in this endeavor, in determining, through crystallography, at which you are quite expert—

  ROSALIND: Thank you. I am.

  WILKINS: Yes. No one will argue with that. (Beat.) At any rate, we need to push forward in determining why it is that in the chromosome the numbers of purines and pyrimidines come in pairs. So that we can then determine how replication works. So that we can then determine—

  ROSALIND: I know what you’re talking about.

  WILKINS: Yes, yes I suppose you do. Then I’ll leap straight to the point. You will be assisting me in my study of the Signer DNA from Switzerland. Everyone wanted it and yet somehow Randall got it. The old rogue. I don’t know how he did it…

  ROSALIND: I don’t think I heard you correctly.

  WILKINS: You did! We have the Signer stock. Quite a coup really. When you think about it.

  ROSALIND: But did you say I’d be assisting you?

  WILKINS: Yes!…And my doctoral student, Ray Gosling, will assist you.

  GOSLING: Hello!

  (He puts out his hand and ROSALIND ignores it.)

  ROSALIND: But…Randall told me I’d be heading up the study. That I’d be in charge of my own work here. Surely, there’s been some misunderstanding.

  WILKINS: No. No misunderstanding. Circumstances changed. You see…we now feel that if we discover this structure—this structure—we could discover the way the world works, Miss Franklin. What some are calling “the secret of life.” Can you imagine that?

  ROSALIND: Dr. Wilkins, I will not be anyone’s assistant.

  (Beat.)

  WILKINS: What was that?

  ROSALIND: I don’t like others to analyze my data, my work. I work best when I work alone. If, for whatever reason, I am forced into a different situation, I should feel that I came here under false pretenses.

  WILKINS: I see…Then perhaps we could think of our work together as a kind of partnership. Surely that will suit you?

  ROSALIND: I don’t suppose it matters whether or not it suits me, does it?

  (She exits.)

  GOSLING: Well, that went well.

  WATSON: See? She was meant to be Wilkins’ assistant, and therein lay the problem. She misunderstood the terms. And after that, the rest was inevitable. The race lost right there. In a single moment.

  WILKINS: No—nothing is inevitable.

  CASPAR: She would never have left Paris to be someone’s subordinate. She was quite clear with me about that.

  CRICK: Well, that’s not what we heard.

  CASPAR: You heard what you wanted to hear. One of those specialties of human nature.

  WILKINS: Is it really absolutely necessary that you be here too?

  CASPAR: The witness to your transgression? Yeah, I think it’s necessary.

  WILKINS: And what transgression might that be, pray tell? I have nothing to apologize for.

  CASPAR: No? Nothing?

  GOSLING: Anyway! We began. In a laboratory further underground than the air-raid shelters built under the underground a few years earlier. Or so it felt, at least.

  (ROSALIND, WILKINS and GOSLING are spread out in the lab, working.)

  ROSALIND: Could it be any gloomier here? As your partner, I might entreat you to find us a more hospitable working environment.

  WILKINS: Labs are more nicely appointed in Paris, then?

  ROSALIND: There’s no comparison.

  WILKINS: You know, not all of us felt we should leave England when the country needed us most.

  ROSALIND: Thank you, Dr. Wilkins, for your patriotic spirit. I can assure you, however, that I was doing much more for British society after the war by working on coal molecules in France than I would have had I been in London eating rationed food and parking my car on a site cleared by a bomb that used to be someone’s home.

  WILKINS: I was only joking—really.

  GOSLING: (Trying to lighten the situation.) It’s true—he’s quite the jokester.

  ROSALIND: And aren’t you the same Wilkins who worked on the Manhattan Project in California during the war?

  WILKINS: (Proudly.) For a few months’ time, yes.

  ROSALIND: Maybe you’re aware of the fact that not a single female scientist from Britain was given a research position during wartime?

  WILKINS: Is that so.

  ROSALIND: I’ll have you know that nuclear force is not something of which I approve.

  WILKINS: Then I suppose it’s good no one asked you to work on it.

  ROSALIND: I beg your pardon?

  WILKINS: (Attempting to joke.) At any rate, you lot never do seem to approve of it.

  ROSALIND: I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at.

  GOSLING: No, he—

  WILKINS: All I meant was—the irony of…

  ROSALIND: What irony?

  WILKINS: (Without apology.) Just that…people…worked hard to…come up with these ways to save…well, the Jews, and then all you hear back from them is how they don’t approve. It feels a little…

  ROSALIND: You’re absolutely right that the Jews should be in a more grateful frame of mind these days.

  WILKINS: All right, Rosy.

  ROSALIND: My name is Rosalind. But you can call me Miss Franklin. Everyone else does.

  WILKINS: Fine.

  ROSALIND: Of course I’d prefer Dr. Franklin but that doesn’t seem to be done here, does it, Mr. Wilkins?

  WILKINS: Dr. Wilkins.

  ROSALIND: Dr. Wilkins, I don’t joke. I take my work seriously as I trust you do too.

  WILKINS: Of course I do.

  (Long beat.)

  GOSLING: How do you like that—it’
s nearly two already.

  WILKINS: No need for constant updates on the time, Gosling. There’s a clock right there that we can see perfectly well—

  GOSLING: No…I was just saying, or, I mean, suggesting, that perhaps we might take our lunch?

  ROSALIND: We’ve been having so much fun that the time has really flown, hasn’t it, Dr. Wilkins?

  WILKINS: Has it.

  ROSALIND: So where shall we go? I’m famished, actually.

  (WILKINS starts to leave; he’s off to lunch.)

  Dr. Wilkins?

  WILKINS: (Turning back.) Hm?

  (Off her look.)

  Oh, I’d love to have lunch, but…

  ROSALIND: But what?

  WILKINS: (Matter-of-fact.) I eat in the senior common room.

  ROSALIND: That’s where we’ll go then.

  WILKINS: That’s the thing.

  ROSALIND: What’s the thing?

  WILKINS: It’s for men only.

  ROSALIND: Is that so.

  WILKINS: It is.

  (Beat.)

  ROSALIND: Well go to it then.

  WILKINS: If you’re sure.

  ROSALIND: Absolutely.

  WILKINS: All right then.

  GOSLING: (To the audience.) The next hour was…well, it wasn’t what you’d traditionally think of as fun.

  ROSALIND: It’s absurd, isn’t it? Archaic!

  GOSLING: What is?

  ROSALIND: Well, this business of the senior common room, of course.

  GOSLING: I suppose. But…you can’t worry about it.

  ROSALIND: I can worry over whatever I choose to worry over, Mr. Gosling!

  GOSLING: It’s not like biophysicists have such great conversations at meals anyway. They tend just to talk about the work. They never take a break.

  ROSALIND: But those are precisely the conversations I need to have. Scientists make discoveries over lunch.

  GOSLING: If you say so.

  ROSALIND: Can I ask you a question?

  GOSLING: Of course.

  ROSALIND: What’s he like—Wilkins. You’ve worked for him for a few years, haven’t you?