World Premiere of QUANTUM LOVERS: THE MUSICAL to Explore the Turbulent Love Affair of Young Albert Einstein
Running at the West End Theater from September 15th to November 30th.
The passionate but troubled romance between the young scientists Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric, who met in Switzerland in the early years of the Twentieth Century, is the subject of the world premiere QUANTUM LOVERS: THE MUSICAL, by Hasan Padamsee, a Cornell University Professor of Physics and playwright with three previously produced plays to his credit. This intense and tragic romance, a musicalization of a previous play by Padamsee, was inspired by the books EINSTEIN IN LOVE: A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE by Dennis Overbye, EINSTEIN IN BERLIN by Thomas Levenson, and ALBERT EINSTEIN/MILEVA MARIC: THE LOVE LETTERS by Albert Einstein, Jurgen Renn, Robert Schulmann and Shawn Smith. Padamsee wrote the musical’s book and the lyrics for its 22 musical numbers, with music by Athena Antiporda (Ainna), Roberto Flora, Michaela Catapano, Anshu Jha, Umuk oro Fortune (El Doxa). QUANTUM LOVERS: THE MUSICAL will be performed three times only – on Friday, August 11 and Saturday, August 12 at 7:30 each night; and on Sunday, August 13 at 2:30 pm. The fully staged performances will be at City Lit Theater, located on the second floor of the Edgewater Presbyterian Church at 1020 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue, Chicago.
Albert Einstein, known as the father of relativity who transformed space, time and gravity, also played a major role in discovering Quantum Physics, a concept mysterious, full of apparent contradictions, difficult to understand, and yet captivating. Like quantum physics, true love is magical but enigmatic, deceptively familiar but incomprehensible. Can the man with dramatic success in revolutionizing space, time and gravity succeed in taming the Quantum? Can
Einstein find true love in the whirlpool of his personal experiences?
Padamsee’s cast of eight includes Carson Carter (Albert Einstein), Mikaela May (Mileva Maric), Peter Stielstra (Max Planck and Professor Weber), Carleigh Ray (Elsa Lowenthal Einstein), Eliana Tirona (Milana Bota and Young Mileva), Ronnie Lyall (Marcel Grossman), Patricia Lomden (Ruzica Drazic), and Erick Heyer-Fogelberg. The production team is Rachel Fox (Stage Manager), Dominic “Dom” Bonelli (Sound Engineer), Autumn Thielander (Choreographer), Zoie Morack (Lighting Designer), and Mario Gallego (Production Assistant).
Padamsee began writing plays as a device to teach physics to his Cornell students. He wrote short plays about fascinating characters and the adventure of their discoveries, and gave his students the option to perform the plays in lieu of writing papers. Since those days he has written the full-length plays CREATION’S BIRTHDAY, QUANTUM LOVERS, QUANTUM WONDERLAND, in addition to QUANTUM LOVERS - THE MUSICAL. Padamsee says of QUANTUM LOVERS, “ By exploring two less charted dimensions of Einstein’s character, passionate lover, and staunch anti-nationalist, the play is transporting, timely and true. It moves the audience to Europe into the time that led to the First World War, strongly connecting to the dominant events of today.”
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