College senior Asher Rapkin, the director of the upcoming play Copenhagen, and College senior Tom Taylor, who plays Werner Heisenberg, sat down with the Review.

Sarah Wallace: Tell me a little about Copenhagen.
Asher Rapkin: Although physics would be what everybody assumes Copenhagen’s about, it’s really about the relationship between two physicists, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.
Tom Taylor: You’re boring, Asher. So, the play is really good. It’s about the relationship between these two physicists. They’re both really smart. They both won a Nobel Prize. Bohr is married. His wife is in the play too. They argue a lot and figure out why Heisenberg came to Copenhagen. That’s the end of the play.
A: I mean that’s only kind of what it’s about. That’s like the stupid person version. The intelligent person version would have to do more with a discussion of the relationship between the two men, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr as seen through the eyes of Bohr’s wife Margrethe, specifically regarding their clandestine encounter in 1941.
T: Asher, you’re still boring.
S: Tom, you’re also a physics major. Has this helped for this role?
T: Well, I’m a physics major. Heisenberg presumably, when he went to college was also a physics major even though the German educational system is slightly different from the U.S., so we share that in common. Also, Heisenberg’s a genius and I’m a genius.
A :or pretty fucking stupid! What’s really important is that without Tom as an advisor we’d be kind of lost. A lot of the physics in the play have been helped by having a physics major on hand to really help analyze the text.
S: You have worked together before; tell me about your working relationship.
A: Tom Taylor has saved my ass
T: about a million times.
S: You’re both doing this for Honors. Is this experience different from a regular show?
T: When I do a show for Honors I do a really good job and then I write a paper about it.
S : Who’s the biggest alcoholic in the Copenhagen cast?
T: As much as I’d like to claim that role, I would have to say that because my girlfriend is a positive influence on me, Ben Sinclair is the biggest alcoholic in the cast.
(at this point Tom takes a shot of whiskey)
T: So, Sarah, let’s turn this around on you. Let’s look objectively at the situation here. If I didn’t have a girlfriend and we were both really drunk, would you have sex with me?
S: No.
T: Please?
S: I’d pay for you to have sex with Asher.
A: How much would you pay?
S: About a $1.75in flex.
A: Hmmm
S: Here’s another serious question: why should audiences want to see Copenhagen?
T: Copenhagen is a very subtle and well-crafted play. The playwright, Michael Frayn, did an amazing job. It brings up some intriguing questions and forces people to take a look at how they see themselves.
A: Also, on a fundamental level the play addresses some issues that aren’t always seen in normal plays. Traditionally when we see a play we’re looking at snippets of life and then we pick up just bits and pieces of characters in the context of the play. In this production, we stick with the characters from start to finish in a way that is not usually done.
T: So, the other day I was in my apartment. I bent over to find something in my bag and my girlfriend came up and put her hands on my lower back as a way of saying hi, and I pulled down my pants and farted on her. It was the most amazing thing ever.
A: I feel like this really categorizes Werner Heisenberg. The world came up behind him, held him and he just farted on it in the form of a nuclear bomb.
S: Umm, okay. Tell me about some of the other people involved in thisplay?
A: We have a brand new actress named Amy Oelsner playing Margrether Bohr.
T: What do you mean brand new? She’s 18. She’s not a newborn.
A: Ben Sinclair is playing Niels Bohr. There’s a full production staff that’s doing exactly what I tell them. Then there’s Tom’s support staff.
T: Being the amazing actor that I am, and this being my twelfth production here at Oberlin, I do require a fair amount of stuff. I need a bottle of Jack Daniels in my dressing room, distilled water brought by an oompah loompah and the satin sheets on my bed.
S: To get back to the business at hand, what do you hope audiences walk away with after seeing Copenhagen?
T: A deep uncertainty at the heart of things, the final core of uncertainty at the heart of things.
A: My phone number.

Little Theater. Dec. 4, 5 and 6 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. $3 students/OCID/senior citizens, $5 public, an additional $2 at the door.