The “comedy of science”

by Alessandro Ferrua

From 2 to 7 July science and technology will be the centre of attention in Turin, at EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF 2010). This is a two-year european meeting dedicated to scientific research and innovation designed by Euroscience, organization consisting of members of the scientific community. The meeting promotes debates about science and technology evolution in today’s society and about policies to support research. At the Centro Congressi (Convention Center) of Lingotto there will be conferences and debates with the most illustrious names in the scientific community. In the streets and squares in the center activities will be organized, to involve citizens. On ESOF 2010 website you can subscribe directly to the forum.

Turin’s candidacy was promoted by: Agorà Scienza (Centro Interuniversitario dell’Università di Torino, Politecnico di Torino, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Università di Scienze Gastronomiche), Compagnia di San Paolo and Centro Scienza Onlus. This is the fourth edition, after those of 2004 in Stockholm, 2006 in Munich and 2008 in Barcelona.

In this initiative is housed the performance of a play: “Arlecchino e il colore del quark”(“Arlecchino and the color of quarks”), with Valentina Aicardi, Roberta Maraini and Matteo Volpengo. Written by Marco Monteno, research worker at the INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Phisycs), “once was presented to CERN in the form of reading, while now is more poetic” says Marco Alotto, director. In this performance the actors reveal us the mysteries of science through simple language: the nice story of the capricious Queen, who discovers, on the web, the existence of quarks, elementary particles of matter that can may be of different colors. So she asks Arlecchino (the famous character from the “commedia dell’arte”) to get her some of them, for sticking to her dress. Arlecchino goes to the market to look for colored particles and meets Ginevra, the greengrocer, physics student, who reveals him the true nature of quarks, so we discover that they possess a property called “color charge”, but they are neutral in color. So Arlecchino will bring to the Queen something she can not apply to the dress. The same director tells that “the three characters of the modern “commedia dell’arte” are connected like the three quarks of a proton”: two quark up and one quark down; indeed Arlecchino falls in love first with the Queen and then with the greengrocer. It looks like a combination of human dynamics to the most basic and invisibles natural processes, that makes the audience think about the nature and the human nature in a funny way.

The theatrical association Itaca will play the group stage with comedy at the “Teatro Cavallerizza Reale” in Via Verdi 9, in Turin, Saturday 3 July with two performances: h 21,30 and h 1,00. It will replicate Sunday 4 July at 21,30 and Monday 5 July at 10,00.