Actually, even that is too generous of a statement of my working knowledge of physics. However, the title character of my new play The Physics of Joy is a PhD candidate in physics, and I have to write her.

It all started with a simple enough idea: could I take a word with multiple meanings, in my case gravity, and use each possible definition as mini-themes within the uber-them of the shows narrative arc? Of course, not knowing anything about gravity or all of its various definitions, I started with Merriam-Webster. Some of the definitions were obvious, and loaded with possibilities for drama, "a serious situation or problem," for example.

Others were less obvious:

“3 a (1) : the gravitational attraction of the mass of the earth, the moon, or a planet for bodies at or near its surface (2) : a fundamental physical force that is responsible for interactions which occur because of mass between particles, between aggregations of matter (as stars and planets), and between particles (as photons) and aggregations of matter, that is 10-39 times the strength of the strong force, and that extends over infinite distances but is dominant over macroscopic distances especially between aggregations of matter —called also gravitation, gravitational force — compare electromagnetism 2a, strong force, weak force”

I spent a lot of time crawling the net, exploring topics of physics and generally trying to learn a thing or two, but my first real inspiration came when my normal RadioLab podcast served me up this discussion between Robert Krulwich and Brian Greene, physics and mathematics professor and director of the Institute of Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University.

I had my inspiration. A search of Professor Greene lead me to his amazing NOVA special, The Fabric of the Cosmos, based on his bestselling book by same title.

While I am confident that there is much that I will have gotten wrong, Professor Greene's work, and all of the great physicist that he has led me to, has been inspirational. I've reached out to friends and family in search of physicists interested and willing to collaborate directly. Until such time I hear back from them, this work has been as grand a place to start as I could hope.

Thank you, Brian Greene.