Squaring the Circle is a 1984 BBC television play written by Sir Tom Stoppard, directed by Mike Hodges, and starring Bernard Hill as Lech Waà ÂÃÂsa. It is an unreliable narrator depiction of the rise of the Polish trade union Solidarnoà Âàand its suppression by the communist government under the threat of Russian invasion.
The title is an allusion to the provably unsolvable geometrical problem of squaring the circle, i.e., constructing a square with the area of a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with a compass and straightedge:
The play was conceived in 1982, but owing to a power-struggle between the BBC and the American production company Metromedia, was heavily modified and not broadcast until 1984.