About the Play:

Proof has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female/female scenes and female/male scenes.

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play.

Proof is a full-length drama by David Auburn. The daughter of a recently deceased mathematician must fight to prove the authorship of a landmark proof that is discovered among her father's papers, while also dealing with her father's legacy of genius and mental illness. Proof is a passionate examination of the nature of genius, gender, and the power of love. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

Proof is the story of an enigmatic young woman, Catherine, her manipulative sister, their brilliant father, and an unexpected suitor. These are pieces of the puzzle in the search for the truth behind a groundbreaking mathematical proof. Catherine has spent years caring her mentally unstable father Robert, Robert, a brilliant mathematician who, in his youth, produced three radical proofs. His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, one of her father's former students, who has come to the house to go through Robert's 103 notebooks to determine if he wrote anything of value (a proof) in the last years of his troubled life. The passion that Hal feels for math both moves and angers Catherine, who, in her exhaustion, is torn between missing her father and resenting the great sacrifices she made for him. Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father's madness – or genius – will she inherit? David Auburn has fashioned an exhilarating and assured play – a subtle and gripping exploration of loss, guilt, discovery, instability, and, ultimately, the elusive nature of truth.

Proof premiered in 2000 off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) and transferred to Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional repertory, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male

What people say:

"When we think of the great American playwrights, we think of Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill and Lillian Hellman, in earlier generations; Wendy Wasserstein and Tony Kushner, Jon Robin Baitz and Donald Margulies today: They are always writing about big ideas and wrapping them in family squabbles that get us where we live. Welcome David Auburn to the club. Proof is the one you won't want to miss this fall." — New York Magazine

"An exhilarating and assured new play … accessible and compelling as a detective story … has the pace of a psychological thriller...." — The New York Times

"…combines elements of mystery and surprise with old-fashioned storytelling to provide a compelling evening of theatre…[Proof is a] smart and compassionate play of ideas." — New York Daily News

"Proof surprises us with its aliveness … Mr. Auburn takes pleasure in knowledge … At the same time, he is unshowily fresh and humane, and he has written a lovely play." — New York Observer

"[A] wonderfully funny … ambitiously constructed work…." — Variety

"Auburn has taken on some biggies here; what the link may be between genius and mental instability, why it is that lives get stuck, and how elusive the truth can be … [Proof's] level of accomplishment and the realness of its characters show that Auburn has both depth and a voice." — The New Yorker

About the Playwright:

David Auburn is an American playwright whose play Proof won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was also adapted into a film. He has received the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been published in Harper's Magazine and The New England Review. He was a member of the Juilliard playwrighting program.