The Mathematics of Change: A Comic Monologue about Failure at Princeton
April 5, 2012
J. Edward Farnum Lecture (cosponsored by the Department of Mathematics)
Josh Kornbluth (’80) is a comic monologuist who has performed in theaters around the country, as well as in Poland and India. He codirected and starred in the feature film Haiku Tunnel, released nationally by Sony Pictures Classics in 2001, and stars in the forthcoming movie Love & Taxes. His show Red Diaper Baby was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and was selected for the collection Best American Plays of 1992. The Mathematics of Change tells the raucous story of what happened when Josh, as a Princeton freshman who planned to become (in his father’s words) “the greatest mathematician who has ever lived,” hit the wall at freshman calculus. It also describes some of the horrible work-study jobs he worked at (exposing himself to mouse cancer in a biology lab, and to radiation at the cyclotron), as well as his passionate struggle to pass the undergraduate swimming test. The Mathematics of Change examines, with comedy and pathos, what happens when a young person is caught between the success he’s always expected and the failure he seems to be experiencing.
