While Proof contains many elements of a traditional drama—family drama, sibling quarrels, romance, doubt, and redemption—its examination of mathematics is rather unique in the broader canon of dramatic literature. Indeed, math and science are not common topics for the stage, as they are technical, solitary, and intellectual subjects—hardly the stuff of dramatic tension and emotional upheaval. Yet Proof, in its exploration of the ways that math can organize a life and create a framework for more existential questions, is part of a broader canon of plays about math and science.
Other plays that concern the sciences and the people obsessed by them include Lovesong of the Electric Bear by Snoo Wilson, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, The Doctor's Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw, Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, The Physicists by Frederick Dürrenmatt, and Galileo by Bertolt Brecht. These plays often look at the ways that brilliant mathematicians become absorbed by their work and how that absorption affects their personal lives. Math is a vehicle for exploring questions about connection vs. solitude, knowledge vs. doubt, and authority vs. ignorance.
In 2010, Alexis Soloski wondered in The Guardian, "Why does theatre plus science equal poor plays?" In the article, she bemoans the fact that playwrights do not take the science in them more seriously, writing, "It seems to me that in most plays about science that I see – often those sponsored by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, an organisation with a nifty mission to encourage playwrights to tackle science, but with indifferent results – any actual science is little more than name-checked in favour of some soap opera about the struggles of its diviner. Such a method ignores the fact that though new discoveries are inherently interesting, the same cannot be said of the discoverers themselves."
