More than four hundred school students enjoyed seeing “Primos entre sí”, an amusing and ingenious theater play that seeks to awake the interest in Mathematics. The event was held in Pontificia Universidad Católica (Santiago) and in Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (Valparaíso) on 5th August and 31 th December respectively. It was organized by Capde Millenium Nucleus Center for the Analysis of Partial Differential Equations as part of its outreach activities.
“We aim to encourage young people to approach to science, which often is not an easy task”, remarked Alexander Quaas, Capde researcher. The comedy represents daily situations through the sharp dialogues of a couple.
“The performance was very realistic. The attitude of the mathematician while lecturing was very appropriately depicted”, said Manuel del Pino, main Capde researcher.
The play highlights the importance of mathematics nowadays. For instance, the strong influence that the information theory developed by Claude Shannon has on technology . “Students understood the ideas very well. In classrooms sometimes it is more difficult to explain and to keep their attention”, stated José Peña Godoy, teacher at Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, one of the eight schools that attended the event.The screenplay was an adaptation of the one of the same name written by Omar Gil, mathematician from Universidad de la República in Uruguay who also studied theater. His first article came on the occasion of the World Championship in 2006 came under the name ”Mathematically, we have chance”: “I was unsatisfied with the result. So, I wrote to proof why Uruguay had to be classified”.The main point of this version is the exchange roles: she is the mathematician, instead of his cousin. Thus, it is intended to stress the women´s talent for science. After the play in Santiago, Gil, who has already performed the play for more than 20 times, met Estefanía Aedo, director of this adaptation. They both talked about teaching strategies that could be included in future shows of “Primos entre sí”. “We want to open the theater to all the society, including those who have fewer opportunities to access this kind of art”, pointed out Aedo.