"the best possible time of being alive...

...when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong"

What’s Arcadia all about? The more I ask, the more concepts emerge. Tonight, I asked it again when I went to the production of Arcadia, put on by Oxford students at the local picturehouse. The story starts off in a 19th Century English country-house, and translates between the past and the modern day, until they overlap, demonstrated in the play by the two existing simultaneously. If the past did not exist, there would be no present. If the present did not exist, there would be no-one to uncover and recognise the past, and it would therefore cease to be. The two cannot be without each other. The play explores the unity of time, and opened my mind to unfixed possibilities in the nature of our world.

There was one particular line which struck me, as the character Valentine put it:

“maths...had been the same maths for a couple of thousand years. Classical…Then maths left the real world behind, just like modern art, really. Nature was classical, maths was suddenly Picassos. But now nature is having the last laugh. The freaky stuff is turning out to be the mathematics of the natural world”

In relation to art, this exploration of abstraction in creativity can be more useful to us than to follow what we know. Perhaps because our minds have been taught to work in a very particular linear fashion. In the play, it is suggested that in overthrowing our system of thinking, we can be led to think alternatively, in progressive and innovative ways:

“to be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing… It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong”

The lesson learned? We won’t make advancements if we stick to the rules.

Tom Stoppard's original script shone through; I would highly recommend going to see this. In all the confusion, there were some mind-broadening concepts to take home.