Theatre: the new language of science
Teaching maths through theatre? ‘Why not?’ replies Maria Eugenia D’Aquino, with the smile of a person who loves a challenge. She’s been on the Milan scene since 1984 and now she’s taking her unstoppable repertoire of classical and contemporary prose and musical theatre on tour. She transitions seamlessly from comedy to tragedy, from the intimate to the provocative, bringing to life not just Euripides and Shakespeare, but Pirandello, Ionesco, Pinter, Bukowski, Sartre, Céline, Copi, and modern Italian and English playwrights.
Her unquenchable thirst led her, in 2002, to invent TeatroInMatematica – ScienzaInScena: a project that combines stage and science, research and creativity. Its name translates as ‘TheatreInMaths – ScienceOnStage’. As its artistic director, she nurtures it and, together with Valentina Colorni, Riccardo Mini, and actors from PACTA . dei Teatri theatre company, builds a network of shows, meetings and workshops that create dialogue between numbers and emotions, formulae and characters.
The project was set up with the support of computer scientist and mathematician Alberto Colorni and today continues to lean on the scientific advice it receives from numerous Politecnico di Milano mathematicians. Among them is Giulio Magli, Director of the Department of Mathematics’ FDS Scientific Awareness Laboratory, who had the pleasure of interviewing her.
Maria Eugenia, let’s talk about how you began your career as a classical actor.
I started my career in theatre in 1984, in Milan, trying my hand at a repertoire of prose and musical theatre, ranging from classical to contemporary – from Euripides, Shakespeare, Schiller, Pirandello, Ionesco, Pinter, Bukowski, Sartre, Céline, Copi, Canetti, etc. to modern Italian and English-speaking playwrights. I went to drama schools and did training courses, of course, exploring a whole range of performance disciplines, driven by curiosity and a desire to experiment with different expressive techniques.
At a certain point, you came up with the idea of combining theatre and mathematics.
Despite starting with classics and the humanities, I have always loved the sciences, spurred on by the education my father gave me and then by studying engineering at the Politecnico di Milano. I pursued a career in theatre, but I always wondered how it was possible to not understand maths. And that led me to think: why not try making shows that break down the stereotype that mathematics is unapproachable? I understood that staging science is not so much about raising awareness or doing outreach, but about transforming technical language into theatrical language, bringing it to life in a way that resonates with the audience and their experiences.
In 2002, you invented the unique project TeatroInMatematica – ScienzaInScena.
Yes. In 2002 I created the TeatroInMatematica – ScienzaInScena project, with a pool of experts in theatrical disciplines (dramaturgy, direction, lighting, acting) and with legitimate scientific advisors; an original initiative, a unique format, which immediately sparked the interest of a large audience. On stage, maths loses that dimension of being an austere science, accessible only to the few, to the experts; it becomes a subject everyone can explore and understand, allowing its beauty and charm to rise to the surface. Since then we’ve done 11 shows, dozens of meet-ups, books, and workshops.
The basic principle is to use the skills and languages inherent to both science and theatre to rediscover the ancient inseparable connection between scientific culture and humanistic culture, thus revealing the mystery and charm of the point at which Art and Science meet. The invention of a new theatrical language is one of the main aspects around which the project revolves, the key to its innovative character. This new language is able to capture some of the principles of and parallels with scientific thought. It becomes, then, a new communication tool.
In 2008 ‘PACTA. dei Teatri’ was founded. PACTA has been running an actual festival for some years…
In 2008, together with other artists and people working in this area, I founded PACTA . dei Teatri in Milan, of which I’m president. This association manages the PACTA Salone in Via Dini, one of the city’s liveliest theatres.
And in 2018, I set up Festival ScienzaInScena. The idea had hit me 15 years earlier with TeatroInMatematica, through which we met others who recognised in theatre the potential to create an approach to science that is tangible, visible, ‘liveable’. Now in its ninth edition, the Festival enjoys the patronage and partnership of several scientific institutions, including: Politecnico di Milano, INAF (Italian Institute of Astrophysics), CNR (Italian Research Council), CNR-ISAC (Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences), CREIS (European Research Centre for Sustainable Innovation), Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley, the Civic Planetarium of Milan, and the University of Camerino. Since 2025, Rai Pubblica Utilità (the Rai TV network department tasked with promoting and enhancing social and cultural development in Italy) has been the Festival’s media partner.
What obstacles are there to combining theatre with scientific awareness? And what aspects, then, bring the most satisfaction?
One of the biggest risks of combining theatre and scientific awareness is definitely that you only ‘spark’ a discourse that matches the style of traditional education and teaching, thus losing all the dramatic force of theatre. Therefore, on the one hand, we must find the middle ground between the rigor of science and creative freedom; on the other, we must elevate ‘disseminative’ language to become an alternative process, one of ‘revelation’. Theatre is about revealing, not lecturing. I’m not saying that’s a problem – you just have to know how to do it. The real problem isn’t so much in what we’re offering – we have a consolidated team of experts in theatrical disciplines and scientific advisers; the real problem is a sadly increasingly widespread issue, where experts from the scientific world, without any specific knowledge of theatre, take to the stage with a half-decent lecture, passing it off as theatre. That contributes to this great sense of confusion.
As for satisfaction, there is so much of it: most of all – and it often happens – when the audience thanks you for the passion and excitement that has opened up scientific horizons they thought were closed to them. They’ll say they felt like they were part of these ‘unknown’ stories that have affected the evolution of humanity. But also when students get involved, students whom you have guided through your production to come up with their own creative paper or theses around scientific topics.
Why do you think people are afraid of mathematics, and how can you help them see past that?
I think people’s fear of maths is largely cultural. There are plenty of reasons for it, often linked to the way it is taught and presented to them, right from the early days of school. Thankfully, a large increase in new teaching methodologies for maths are remedying past educational shortcomings in that area. It’s never easy to get people to accept something that seems distant and abstract, made up of rules, formulae and concepts that are difficult to grasp. But motivation to study such a subject comes precisely when we get a feel for its meaning, glimpse the connection between what we’re learning and our abilities, our interests, our goals and the world around us.
Maths, after all, requires thought. It cannot be reduced to a set of rules to be memorised. To learn mathematics is to learn to think, to reason logically and creatively, to intuit, imagine, design, hypothesise, verify. It’s an exercise that trains the mind to observe the world, to assign an order to things and to measure them. And because you only learn to think by thinking, it’s vital that we create opportunities to stimulate reasoning and push us to use our intelligence in an active and curious way.
That conviction is also the basis of my idea to bring mathematics to the theatre – which is as simple as it is revolutionary. Through an original, fun and innovative approach, the theatre lets us explore equations, formulae and theorems that usually strike fear in school pupils. In the theatre, you can learn maths with the body, with movement, with the emotions a scene evokes.
Ultimately, science and theatre have much more in common than you think. Both seek the truth, have an educational function, and speak a universal language. This is why theatre makes the ideal bridge between science and art, rationality and creativity, logic and imagination: they can coexist, without one prevailing over the other. Behind every theorem is a person, a story, a desire. Theatre can reveal them.
Besides stage shows, have you drawn up any other productions that put the audience at the centre of a creative approach to scientific topics?
Yes, I have developed productions – mainly for high school students, but also for the youngest pupils, and for all ages – where participating doesn’t just mean spectating, but entering the scene, writing, interpreting, making use of their bodies and playing with creativity. These workshops aim to approach scientific disciplines with an informal and interactive teaching technique that sparks curiosity – fundamental for the emotional involvement of participants – as well as motivating them and stimulating their minds. I invented a methodology I called learning by playing, which builds upon the idea of learning by doing, a play on the word play, which evokes two meanings – that of recreation and that of an on-stage performance.
The methodology puts participants at the centre of this ‘creative act’, obviously having first provided them with the necessary basic tools for it. The metaphorical nature of theatre makes it possible to take some of the dynamics fundamental to any form of learning and turn them into something tangible and real. We can then overcome a range of difficulties relating to motivation, content, the mind.
Along the way, participants are enabled to manipulate topics in science, to transform them and reveal their meaning in another language – a language that triggers a creative process. Or, they are inspired to tell the stories of important women and men of the past and present who have left their mark on the evolution of scientific thought, using different theatrical techniques.
It is a form of participatory theatre that produces knowledge and community together.
Your partnership with the Politecnico, and in particular with the Department of Mathematics’ Teaching Training and Experimentation (FDS) Laboratory, is long-standing. What have been the most significant experiences?
For over 20 years, my work has revolved around my partnership with the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Mathematics and with the FDS Laboratory. With them, we have built shows, workshops and formats that combine research, training and theatre. The most significant experience was when we created a pool of scientists that then accompanied every theatrical and training initiative in the field of mathematics, ensuring precision and providing the necessary elements to develop the creative side of it all, in a perfect partnership with the pool of theatrical experts. That dialogue has lasted for years and continues to evolve.
In a recent initiative, you offered an alternative depiction of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, to whom you dedicated a show and about whom we’re making a podcast together, as part of the ‘Inventare la matematica’ (Inventing Mathematics) series. What’s the importance of this famous figure?
Who is this lady, whom a French anthropologist travelling to Italy in 1739, barging into her salon of science in Milan, described as ‘neither ugly nor beautiful’? This definition seems to allude to something of an anonymous, modest figure. But behind it hides a key figure of 18th century Milan, Italy and Europe: Maria Gaetana Agnesi, mathematician, philosopher, benefactor. In 2018, to mark her 300th birthday, I created an entire schedule for the Municipality of Milan entitled Avrei voluto conoscerla! (If Only I Could Have Met Her!), in partnership with the Politecnico di Milano, the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, and the Pio Albergo Trivulzio. In the show that I dedicated to her, we tell a very special story, the story of a revolutionary woman who created futuristic models for education and care: a story that cannot be left untold, a fresco of a period of enlightenment in history.
Putting it on stage restores a cultural memory and overturns stereotypes.
With the Inventing Mathematics podcast, we’re taking that story further; it’s another channel through which we can get people to listen, reflect, share. Agnesi is a role model of knowledge, of civic and social commitment, of independent thought. Telling her story today prompts us to consider who our future role models will be.
What are your plans and future prospects?
Putting on the ninth Festival ScienzaInScena, from 27 January to 28 February 2026, in my theatre – the PACTA Salone in Milan – and in special places in the city, such as the Civic Planetarium Ulrico Hoepli, with our ‘theatrical/scientific’ productions, but also hosting other Italian companies that, like us, are working at the crossroads between Art and Science. We’re also planning celebrations to mark 25 years of TeatroInMatematica and 10 years of Festival ScienzaInScena in 2027.
And I’m currently working on new scientific theatre productions and continuing with workshops in schools and universities.
Do you think theatre can help overcome stereotypes in science, especially gender stereotypes?
Yes, of course. Theatre is a place of imagination and representation: we can turn our perspectives on their heads, stage forgotten stories, restore complexity.
When I put figures like Agnesi, Du Châtelet, and Nightingale on the stage, I’m helping to make it clearer that research, discovery, and intuition are not the sole domain of men. They belong to all humans. Theatre can show this with more direct impact than many scholars could.
And I think it really helps to overcome stereotypes. Theatre transforms knowledge into experience, and experience is something everyone can access.
Is there a mathematician or a scientific figure you dream of bringing to the stage but haven’t yet had the chance to?
For many years, I’ve been exploring humanity by painting original portraits, starting with the lives of notable figures from the world of science. To name a few: Hypatia, the forgotten astronomers, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Hedy Lamarr, protagonists of shows that were highlights of the Municipality of Milan theatre schedule, I talenti delle donne (the Talents of Women), Maria Sybilla Merian, Wangari Maathai, Eva Mameli Calvino, Laura Conti, Alice Hamilton, Donella Meadows, Mario Tchou, Gabrielle Émilie du Châtelet, and lastly, Florence Nightingale.
But the list of great scientists I would like to reveal on stage is ten times as long. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to complete it.
I’d also love to work on contemporary figures who combine science, ethics and social change: the women and men of today who are doing research into sustainability, artificial intelligence, computational biology, etc.
I would like to bring to the stage not only historical science, but science that is happening now, that’s alive, that’s looking to the future.
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