A Second Time Around for “Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp through M.I.T.’s Male Math Maze.
Photo Michael Hoban
Gioa De Cari’s autobiographical one-woman show Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp through M.I.T.’s Male Math Maze returned to the Central Square Theatre this September after nine years for a brief run. Although De Cari was a “recovering mathematician” at the time Harvard’s then president Lawrence Summers gave his 2004 speech in which he asserted the reason that fewer women have careers in science and math is the result of innate gender differences, it inspired her to revisit her experience at M.I.T. In 2009, when Truth Values made its début, the reaction to Summers’s speech was still strong. While male chauvinism has not disappeared, today there are considerably more women working in the world of science and math.