Science is becoming increasingly visible in the theatre, where it is often regarded as a fertile source of ideas and metaphors. I argue that we should not overlook the potential of science as an abundant well of visual imagery for the theatre. Scientific research and discovery can provide new physical languages for theatrical expression, and new ways of looking at and depicting the world. Scientists at the nexus of experiment and discovery have often seen things never before observed by human eyes; such visions, recreated or re-imagined for a theatre audience, can stimulate the kind of wonderment that is central to the theatrical experience.

Scientists are (at least according to convention) people who crave ideas. The archetypal scientist sits and theorizes. This is at best a caricature, but scientists rarely challenge it, and when scientists become interested and involved in the theatre-or playwrights become entranced by science-it is a theatre of ideas that typically results. Drama becomes a tool for exploring notions pirated from the scientific tradition, and that exploration is laden with a burden of words. Michael Frayn's captivating Copenhagen, the current blueprint for 'science in theatre', is a rich cascade of words. There is next to no 'action' in the play, aside from the compelling action unfolding in the characters' mental worlds as they struggle through dialogue to make sense of what has happened to them.

Consider, then, this thought from Peter Brook: "Is there another language, just as exacting for the author as a language of words? Is there a language of actions, a language of sounds - a language of word-as-part-of-movement, of word-as-lie, word-as-parody, of word-as-rubbish, of word-as-contradiction, of word-shock or word-cry?" Brook is regarded as one of the fathers of physical theatre, and yet his points of reference in his book The Empty Space (Penguin, 1990), from which this quote comes, are Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett: dramatists whose skill at crafting words defines much of their genius. What Brook wants to tell us is not that theatre should abandon words, less still ideas-but that real theatre, the theatre that grips us and holds us breathless until the lights come up, is not about either of these things. Rather, it is about ritual, on the one hand, and entertainment, on the other. Both of these things-the 'holy' and the 'rough' theatre, as Brooks expresses it-have their own languages, within which words are, in both cases, strictly optional.

I want to make the plea that science-in-theatre (I like Carl Djerassi's term, though I'd debate its meaning) remember this notion of theatre. Brook's opening sentences should be the starting point for everything theatrical: "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged." This walking and watching is the fundamental act of drama. A script is not a piece of theatre. A script might indeed start from an idea, but theatre starts with an action.

There are two reasons why this consideration finds particular resonance in productions that engage in some way with science. First, it reflects what goes on in science itself. Science is not theory. Think of the atom, invented by Leucippus in the fifth century BC, confidently imagined by Newton, drawn by Dalton-and yet some eminent scientists were still loath to accept the notion until we could watch atoms act, inducing the dance of pigment grains in Jean Perrin's microscope in 1908. Experiment is where an idea is played out, put to the test, and only then does it become real. One might even argue that only then does it become science. Similarly, there is no Lear on the printed page, but only when he steps onto the stage. Before that, there are just words (but what words!) that Lear is instructed to speak.

Second, it is one of the most exciting, yet curiously under-exploited, characteristics of science-as far as the dramatist is concerned-that it presents a vast palette of images that are potentially useful to the theatre. Science has been mined for its metaphors, not just by playwrights but by authors and poets. But how many have begun to take advantage of science's panoply of images? New technologies give us stunning displays of light and sound, video capabilities, interactive interfaces between performer, audience and environment, robotics and holography; but that is not exactly what I'm talking about. Science has an inherent theatricality. Go to the Boston Science Museum and watch the 'lightning display', where great "oak-cleaving thunder-bolts" blast through the tense and gloomy space. Think of Eve Curie's description of how her parents returned late one night to their lab and found it all aglow from beakers of radium solution, "like faint fairy lights" in Marie's words. Newton's experimentum crucis in his darkened room, Ršntgen's discovery of X-rays via the shadowed bones of his hand: these are moments of theatre, which happened also to be central to the development of scientific thought.

But of what use are they to the dramatist who is not portraying Curie, Newton or Ršntgen? I am suggesting simply that, if we want to bring science into theatre, we ensure not to neglect its visual aspect in favour of its intellectual content. Most of all, we would do well to remember how, in experiments like these, there is the essential element of theatre: a moment of sheer wonderment.

What are you saying?

We should never attempt to assay science-in-theatre at all before being clear what we are trying to achieve. There is, I think, a more or less clean divide, so far, between theatre writers looking to science, and scientists looking to theatre. For Tom Stoppard, science provides the metaphorical content, the intellectual meat, of a good story. The same is true in several recent productions in London's West End, such as Charlotte Jones's A Humble Boy and David Auburn's Proof. Sometimes this works elegantly, but it is a hard trick to pull off. The problem is that the metaphors are generally unfamiliar to a lay audience, so characters have to engage in thinly disguised tutorials to make sure the audience gets the point. It is difficult to make such explanations sound convincing-partly because real scientists are rarely so adept at encapsulating their ideas neatly in a nutshell as the characters are obliged to be (the playwright can hardly risk making a poor fist of the explaining), and partly because it is hard even for the most well-informed non-scientist to make these characters sound genuine. Most 'stage scientists' are as convincing as those in Hollywood films-like actors trying to persuade us that they are expert footballers, or art historians. We are all too clearly seeing not a scientist but a portrayal of one.

Copenhagen wins out here not just because Michael Frayn did his homework but because his characters are not make-believe scientists explaining Great Ideas to the uninformed, but real scientists who can afford to take mutual knowledge for granted when they converse. Frayn isn't trying to teach us anything, but wants instead to explore his characters' inner lives.

Theatre that arises from within science is typically aiming for the converse. When that is explicitly the case-when the aim is pedagogical-we would be wrong to expect great theatre at the same time, although it can still be entertaining or thought-provoking. "Theatre is a very old, traditional and respected method of teaching and communicating ideas", suggest Sondra Quinn and Jacalyn Bedworth of the Science Museum of Minnesota, and that is true enough. But even the most didactic of Brechtian theatre is not trying to give us information as such, and it would be fatal if it were. Plays that attempt to explore moral and ethical issues of, say, genetic or biomedical technologies (a favourite theme of the Wellcome Trust's Science on Stage and Screen programme) can certainly claim a long historical heritage; but that intention, even if coupled to sharp and stylish dialogue, does not provide a prescription for theatre. We must in the end come back to Brook's vision: one person watching another. What is told, what is suggested, cannot be put into words. Shakespeare explores an awesome range of moral dilemmas, but it is hard even to say precisely what these are, let alone to agree on the conclusions he reaches.

Sometimes science finds its way into theatre neither as metaphor nor as pedagogy. This, I think, is when I like it best. It does not advertise itself, it does not say 'here is the science'; it merely appears as a part of life. It is hard for science to merge so seamlessly in any area of our culture, so we should be glad when it happens on stage. The science is there simply because it is part of the story. Ken Campbell's gloriously meandering (though, I think, deceptively well crafted) monologues take us into quantum physics not because he wants us to understand it or because it parallels any deeper message but because he enjoys telling us about it. Brecht's Galileo just happens to be a scientist; his science produces the dilemmas of his life, but it doesn't illustrate or reflect them. In a sense, The Life of Galileo has nothing to do with science, which is why the science blends in so well.

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