Copenhagen at Austin Playhouse

Austin Playhouse Founder And Co-Producing Artistic Director Don Toner To Retire

Austin Playhouse announces that after 60+ years of producing theatre in Austin and beyond, Founder and Co-Producing Artistic Director Don Toner will step down from his role as Co-Producing Artistic Director. Current Co-Producing Artistic Director Lara Toner Haddock will continue alongside recent additions to the leadership team, Associate Artistic Directors Ben Wolfe and Sarah Fleming Walker.

BWW Review: COPENHAGEN Pontificates the Explosive Meeting of Atomic Minds in Austin, TX

The mission statement of Austin Playhouse is to "Provide opportunities for both Austinite performers and audiences to celebrate the human experience". COPENHAGEN, now playing at their temporary home in the ACC Highland Campus, examines a highly debated meeting between Quantum Mechanics pioneer Werner Heisenberg (played by David Stahl), and his mentor, the "Pope" of Quantum Mechanics, Niels Bohr (play by Ev Lunning Jr.). Also attended by Bohr's wife Margrethe Bohr (played by Babs George), this meeting of the minds takes place years after their first skiing vacations together, in which they collaborated to prove Albert Einstein wrong on atomic theory. The examined reunion took place in September 1941, when Heisenberg was working in Nazi Germany as part of their atomic program. Travelling to Denmark to meet with Bohr, a Danish Jew, tensions ran high as the time for the meeting came closer. Within the polarizing political climate of the time, the show displays the current debate and inherently speculative narrative of what was discussed during this visit and how it may have changed human history.