For Emma LaPlace ’20, Math and Drama Share the Stage
Emma LaPlace ’20 arrived at Vassar with a burning passion for the theater, and she fueled it by acting in more than a dozen plays before she graduated. “I’m pretty sure I spent more time in The Vogelstein [Center for Drama and Film] than any other building on campus,” she said. Even before she enrolled at Vassar, LaPlace had a keen interest in mathematics, and she earned her Vassar degree with a somewhat atypical double major in drama and math.
LaPlace credits Vassar’s liberal arts approach to learning with enabling her to straddle these two seemingly disparate academic disciplines. “Vassar allows you to follow your passions, whatever they may be,” she said. “I was able to form close relationships with members of the drama and math faculty, and some of my math professors came to see me perform in plays.”
Shona Tucker, Professor of Drama on the Mary Riepma Ross ’32 Chair, served as LaPlace’s drama major advisor. She said she believed LaPlace’s unusual combination of academic interests complemented each other. “Her math skills and her drama skills formed a unique prism of talent,” Tucker said. “I saw her in virtually all of her drama performances, and she could focus like no one I have ever seen. She must have moments of doubt like the rest of us, but I never saw them.”
These twin passions continue to define LaPlace’s post-Vassar career. Her first job out of college was teaching mathematics at Frank McCourt High School in Manhattan. Not satisfied with simply teaching math, she founded a drama club at the school that has continued to thrive even after earning a PhD from Columbia University and landing a job teaching math at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT.
LaPlace combined her interests in drama and math in her PhD dissertation by analyzing seven plays, including Tom Stoppard’s acclaimed Arcadia, that employ mathematics as a central theme. And when she started her new job at Albertus Magnus, she discovered that the college didn’t have drama classes. She convinced the college to offer one—and of course, she’ll be teaching it this fall. “It’s my dream job,” she said. “I’ll be teaching math, and I’ll be teaching drama.”
Word of LaPlace’s somewhat unusual combination of expertise prompted organizers of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to invite her to speak at this year’s convention in Philadelphia. LaPlace used the occasion to deliver a spoken version of her PhD dissertation. One member of the audience, Vassar Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Benjamin Lotto, said the talk was well received.
“Emma captivated her audience with her poise and presence, completely unfazed by the fact that she was speaking in a gathering whose attendees included many of the top mathematicians in the world,” Lotto said. “Her performance featured all of the hallmarks of the multidisciplinary approach that characterizes a Vassar education. Her insightful observations on the intersectionality of mathematics and gender in drama were particularly impressive.”
LaPlace delivered the hour-long talk without a teleprompter or written notes. “I memorized it—drama training,” she quipped.