Proof (David Auburn Play)
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Proof (David Auburn Play) trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
David Auburn's Proof puts a mathematician's daughter at the centre of a mystery: a brilliant result turns up in her late father's home, and nobody can agree on who produced it. It is a compact family drama about genius, grief, trust and the fear of turning into your parents, and by 2002 it was the most widely produced play in the United States. This quiz covers the plot scene by scene, the characters and what drives them, the real mathematicians the script draws on, and the people who brought the story to the stage and the screen, from the first cast to the 2026 revival. It suits anyone revising the play for an essay or an exam, theatregoers who saw it live, and viewers who met the story on film. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which award, overseen by Columbia University, did Proof win in 2001 alongside the Tony for Best Play?
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama helped make Proof a fixture: by 2002 it was the most widely produced play in the United States.
Q 02Which Oscar-winning actress played Catherine in Proof on the London stage and again in the 2005 film?
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow took the part on stage in London in 2002 before filming it, and the screen version earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a drama.
Q 03Which Welsh actor played Robert, the brilliant but troubled mathematician, in the 2005 film of Proof?
Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins played Robert, a character the stage version shows only in flashbacks and in Catherine's imagination.
Q 04Which star of The Bear played Catherine when Proof returned to Broadway in 2026 for its first revival?
Ayo Edebiri
Ayo Edebiri made her Broadway debut in the part, and the revival's final week in July 2026 sold out completely.
Q 05Robert's early game-theory work and later breakdown in Proof echo which subject of A Beautiful Mind?
John Nash
John Nash wrote a 27-page thesis on game theory at 21 and began behaving irrationally at 30, an arc critics see mirrored in Robert.
Q 06What does Robert produce in the opening scene of Proof to mark Catherine turning 25?
A bottle of champagne
A bottle of champagne is Robert's gift, yet the cosy scene is only in her head: Robert died the week before.
Q 07Which instrument does Hal play in a rock band made up entirely of fellow mathematicians in Proof?
Drums
Drums are Hal's instrument, and the band turns up to play at the party held on the night of Robert's funeral.
Q 08Hal's band in Proof has a song named after the imaginary number i; how do the musicians perform it?
Standing in silence
Standing in silence for three minutes is the whole act, a maths joke Hal tells Catherine while inviting her to come and hear the band.
Q 09Before his remission in Proof, where did Robert believe extraterrestrials were hiding coded messages for him?
Library books
Library books carried the code, Robert believed: he borrowed them in bulk, convinced aliens were sending messages through their Dewey decimal numbers.
Q 10Which actor played Hal in the 2005 film of Proof, released the same year as his Brokeback Mountain?
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal played Hal, who in the film chases the sisters' departing car and throws the notebook through its window.
Q 11The revolutionary result that Hal reads in one of the notebooks in Proof is a theorem about what?
Prime numbers
Prime numbers are the subject, though the theorem is never spelled out; David Auburn said the maths was just the glue holding a family drama together.
Q 12At what point in Proof does Catherine stun Hal and Claire by saying the notebook's mathematics is hers?
The end of Act One
The end of Act One brings the announcement, and audiences regularly gasped as the interval curtain came down on it.
Q 13Before he turns up to sort through the notebooks in Proof, what was Hal to Robert?
His former student
Q 21At which university near her home did Catherine briefly study maths before dropping out in Proof?
Northwestern
Northwestern was only a short drive away, as Catherine promised Robert, yet she left within months when his delusions returned.
Q 22Which mathematician, who wrote to Gauss under a man's name, does Catherine hold up to Hal in Proof?
Sophie Germain
Sophie Germain signed herself Monsieur Le Blanc, and Catherine quotes to Hal the admiring letter Gauss sent on learning the truth.
Q 23On which part of the family's row house does every scene of David Auburn's Proof take place?
The back porch
The back porch is the only setting, and David Auburn has called his play a conventional back-porch drama that happens to be set on a campus.
His former student: Robert steered Hal through a rough patch in his doctorate, and Hal now combs the notebooks hoping to find something publishable.
Q 14To which city does Claire press Catherine to move with her once Robert's funeral is over in Proof?
New York
New York is where Claire has built her life, and in the final scene she leaves Catherine's plane ticket behind as she storms off.
Q 15What does a hungover Claire reveal she intends to do with the family home in Proof?
Sell it
Sell it, she says, and the news sets off the sisters' fiercest row, with Catherine accusing Claire of leaving her to nurse Robert alone.
Q 16Whom does Catherine telephone on catching Hal sneaking a notebook out of the house in Proof?
The police
The police are dialled mid-argument, and officers call at the house next morning, which is how Claire comes to hear of the row.
Q 17Catherine searches Hal's backpack in Proof and finds nothing; where was the notebook actually hidden?
In his jacket
In his jacket, and when it slips out it proves to hold a lucid entry that Robert wrote about Catherine four years earlier.
Q 18What reason does Hal give Catherine for smuggling one particular notebook out of the house in Proof?
As a birthday present
As a birthday present, he says: he meant to wrap it for her, because in it Robert thanks Catherine for looking after him.
Q 19Catherine hands Hal a key the morning after they spend the night together in Proof; what does it open?
A desk drawer
A desk drawer of Robert's holds the crucial notebook, and handing over the key is Catherine's way of showing Hal that she trusts him.
Q 20At which university, where David Auburn himself studied, was Robert a celebrated professor in Proof?
Chicago
University of Chicago life gave David Auburn his setting, and he recalled the Broadway set drawing gasps from people who had lived in the neighbourhood.
Q 24What news of her own does Claire announce to Catherine over brunch in Proof?
She is getting married
She is getting married, in January, and she uses the news to press Catherine to come and stay with her well before then.
Q 25In what well-paid job has Claire, Catherine's practical older sister, made her career in Proof?
Currency analyst
Currency analyst is Claire's job, and she says her fourteen-hour days paid off the mortgage on the house where Catherine nursed Robert.
Q 26When a jubilant Robert makes Catherine read his new work aloud in Proof, what does the notebook contain?
Rambling nonsense
Rambling nonsense about winter, bookstores and the cold fills the page, and Catherine sees at once that his mind is slipping again.
Q 27What finally persuades Hal that Catherine, not Robert, produced the mathematics he had checked in Proof?
Its newer techniques
Its newer techniques came along too late for Robert to have known them, yet Catherine retorts that this proves nothing and he should have trusted her.
Q 28Which feature of the crucial notebook in Proof makes Claire and Hal doubt that Catherine filled it?
The handwriting
The handwriting looks just like Robert's, and Hal points out that nothing Catherine could explain aloud would settle whose it was.
Q 29What is Catherine doing as the lights fade on the final scene of David Auburn's Proof?
Talking Hal through her work
Talking Hal through her work is the closing image: she opens the notebook, finds a passage, looks at him and simply begins to speak.
Q 30Which company gave Proof its world premiere in May 2000 before the production moved to Broadway?
Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club gave the play a three-month run that sold out, and the director and the whole cast then moved with it to Broadway.