Benjamin Franklin And The American Experiment Collide On Stage

IRA FLATOW: We’re going to take a look at one of the US’s most famous scientists. I’m talking about Benjamin Franklin, of course, inventor of the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the musical instrument the glass harmonica.

He and his son are the subject of a new staging of a play called Franklinland. It explores their contentious relationship, Franklin’s accomplishments as a scientist, and how the scientific method can be used to understand the ongoing experiment of this country. Full disclosure, it was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which also helps support Science Friday. It’s running now until November 3 at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York. And here to tell us more is the playwright of Franklinland, Lloyd Suh. Welcome to Science Friday.

LLOYD SUH: Thanks so much for having me. It’s a thrill to be on.

IRA FLATOW: Nice to have you. OK, why a play about Ben Franklin and his son?

LLOYD SUH: That’s a great question. It happened kind of randomly. Graeme Gillis at Ensemble Studio Theater had asked me if I had any ideas about plays about science, and I’d been doing some reading, casual reading, about Benjamin Franklin. And I’d just been very fascinated with him, in particular with, how does a guy do as much as he did? How are there possibly enough hours in a day?

And so with that prompt from Graeme, I just started thinking about, oh, maybe there’s something there. What would that look like? And that was the springboard that led me to the relationship with his son and how science fed into that.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, it’s also about the scientific method too, right?

LLOYD SUH: Yes, very much so. Yeah, like the whole structure is really rooted in that idea.

IRA FLATOW: Because the scientific method was relatively new at that point.

LLOYD SUH: Yeah, that’s right. The exercise for me was not just about how the scientific method applies to the experiment of America but also how it applies to the experiment of being a parent and how one makes one’s way through the world– and actually not just a parent but a son as well.

IRA FLATOW: So yeah, the play is really about all kinds of experimenting, as you say, experimenting with a new country, with fatherhood, with having children.

LLOYD SUH: Yeah, for sure. And the more I think about it, the act of writing the play was kind of an experiment in that too, like starting with this hypothesis that I could somehow tie all those things together.

IRA FLATOW: Well, you did in the sense that experimentation is a bumpy ride, right? You have some successes, and you have failures.

LLOYD SUH: Yeah, and that’s the great thing about live performance, especially because this is a play that I had written some years ago. Depending on when it’s staged, it feels a little different. The first iteration of the play was during the Obama administration. The second iteration of the play was happening early in the Trump administration, and now this is happening right before a very contentious election. So these are very different data points in terms of how we interpret the way we look at America as an experiment.

IRA FLATOW: When you were first writing the play and researching Benjamin Franklin, what stood out to you that you hadn’t fully realized before?

LLOYD SUH: Oh, so many things. I mean, the main thing that just felt like something that I had to really wrestle with was how that relationship with his son deteriorated. They were so close. And as much as I thought about this idea of Ben as a scrappy, curious, playful inventor, when I got to that part, it became so much about pain and loss and betrayal and dashed hopes. So yeah, the emotional part snuck up on me, and it became the heart of the play. Yeah, there were definitely things that I learned about that I otherwise wouldn’t have, like the Gulf Stream. The sheer volume of things that he dabbled in, it’s mind boggling.

IRA FLATOW: Why did you choose to bring in his musical invention?

LLOYD SUH: Oh, it felt fun, and it was like leaving that one scene with the sort of “God Save the King” moment, and it felt like a great way to transition that into “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and the difference. Yeah, that just felt kind of cool.

And I have, in each one of those scenes, there is some invention or some different one of Ben’s experiments and explorations happening from the kite to the catheter to the Gulf Stream to the bifocals to the glass harmonica So in each one of those, except for one, the one where he’s at his lowest moment, he’s dabbling in something. That’s pretty exciting.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. There’s a scene where we see the lead-up to the famous lightning, key, and kite-flying experiment. When you were recreating this on stage, it was really interesting. What was important for you? What was the point you were trying to get across there?

LLOYD SUH: Well, the first thing that surprised me is I hadn’t realized that William was the one who had held the kite, who was holding it. And that fascinated me just about, What did that involve? especially knowing where their relationship would go. And so it made me think about apprenticeship. It made me think about discovery. It made me think about what it is to be a son and working in service to this idea. And it felt like the perfect way to introduce this idea of all of life as an experiment and an exploration and the way in which I can use that scene as an opportunity for Ben to articulate to his son the goal of all of it, the meaning, the purpose, the why behind it all.

IRA FLATOW: Because when we see these famous pictures of Franklin holding his kite, we never see William, his son, in the photo, do we?

LLOYD SUH: Yeah, exactly.

IRA FLATOW: A recurring theme of the play is how extremely egotistical Franklin is, full of hubris and then trying to recreate himself in his son. You went out of your way to do that.

LLOYD SUH: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of things in the play that are historically accurate, but there are a lot of things in the play that are kind of fictional fantasy. Hopefully everything is rooted in some sense of truth. And I became immediately attracted to this idea of greatness, what it is to be a great man. Just thinking about one of the great differences between William and Ben is in how they’re remembered, and so it made me think a lot about what it is to grow up in the shadow of that greatness.

And as I started to write, it just became really fun, first of all, to have a character in Benjamin Franklin who isn’t just great but also knows that he is great, acknowledges, and that’s part of what William has to contend with. And so, yeah, that definitely became something that, early on, felt like, oh yeah, this is fruitful.

IRA FLATOW: And it’s amazing how it stands up to time, this play, especially in an era we’re living in.

LLOYD SUH: Yeah, thank you for saying that. That’s one of the most important things to me. Even as I was writing it, I was aware of the need to make it portable. I’ve written a lot about history, especially lately, and whenever you’re doing that, you have to be mindful of not just depicting that moment in history but making it relevant to the present.

And then when you think about the present tense as a playwright and working in the theater, you also have to kind of hypothesize about the future. This is something I especially learned in the pandemic when there were no theaters open, that it felt like, oh, everything I write is going to be future tense. I don’t know what the world is going to be like if these things are ever staged. So it became very important to me to think about, could this still make sense and still be relevant in 10 years or beyond?

IRA FLATOW: Yes, we’ve talked about the different ways the scientific method is explored in the play. Do you have any takeaways for scientists and researchers that you discovered as an artist working on this theme?

LLOYD SUH: I mean, yeah. I guess the biggest thing I would just say is that it’s fun, right? This play was kind of kind of a joy to write and especially a joy to write and work on with people in a room. The great thing about writing something that is explicitly designed as an experiment is to say that when you bring collaborators into the room, you can say, hey, we’re all in this together. We’re in this same experiment together.

And because it’s a comedy, it felt like, oh wow, this is just fun and exciting. And that’s the thing that I feel like, when I think about Benjamin Franklin’s approach to anything, just through his own writing, through his attitudes, even in those painful moments, he has this sense of play and enthusiasm and excitement around the sense of discovery. And that felt like the biggest takeaway for me is that whenever we’re doing these things, whether you’re a scientist or a playwright or an actor, let it be fun.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. How do you think about this connection between the scientific method and the United States and our specific moment in history?

LLOYD SUH: Yeah, that’s something that, when I think about putting this play in front of this audience right now– and I think it was a very smart thing for Ensemble Studio Theater to give us this slot right in advance of the election– is that these things are right on the surface of everyone’s mind. We’re all thinking about these things. What is the nature of our democracy? Where are we? How are we doing? How do we interpret this particular data point in the American experiment?

And those questions are ultimately questions that we can answer for today, but given where we are right now and given how momentous and how different the world will be depending on what happens in November, it’s a question that we can’t answer yet. We can only wonder. We can only hope and fear and imagine, which is, in terms of drama, the most exciting place to be. So yeah, it’s pretty exciting to be doing it now.

IRA FLATOW: Well, your play was really interesting to watch, the many layers that you wove into the characters. I hope you have great success with it.

LLOYD SUH: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming to see it and for having me on. It’s a real pleasure.

IRA FLATOW: You’re welcome. Lloyd Suh, author of the play Franklinland. It’s running at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York until November 3.

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