Einstein’s Dreams is an original adaptation-dramatization of the highly acclaimed novel by the physicist-novelist Alan Paige Lightman at MIT. It is based on archival material revealing the day-dreaming sketches and notes of Einstein while working as a clerk at the Patent Office in Berne. Many of these sketches went on to become the century’s most celebrated scientific papers. The idea of a dance theatre rendition of the novel was discussed with Alan Lightman. He agreed readily with the project idea and gave his consent to the adaptation.
The novel contains a prologue, thirty dream sequences, three interludes with conversations between Einstein and his good friend Besso, and an epilogue. The adaptation retained eleven dream sequences, along with the prologue, the interludes and the epilogue.
Science historians will explain Einstein’s Dreams to us from multiple perspectives. Why would he leave home before daybreak and find his way to his desk in the Patent Office? There was undoubtedly a pull factor. It was an extraordinarily productive period in Einstein’s life. (Was there a period that was not?) It was as if he had tasted blood in his intellectual hunger. It kept drawing him with more and more force. His daydreaming was well known, and only served to sharpen the appetite. However, there was also a push factor. The marriage to Mileva was not working and was in fact breaking up. He felt the need every now and then to get away from what he saw as a stifling atmosphere. In one of the interludes in Einstein’s Dreams he talks about this to his friend Besso. The play has been published by Vitasta Publishers as part of an anthology titled 'The History of Ideas', which is available on Amazon and Flipkart.