Science and showmanship are old friends. Joseph Wright of Derby鈥檚 1768 painting depicts a scene that played to huge paying audiences and, barring animal cruelty concerns, would probably earn millions of views online today. As the cockatoo faints in its airless chamber the audience is rapt, wondering if the wizardly natural philosopher will relent and allow his bird to breathe again. This was not an experiment for discovery鈥檚 sake, but for entertainment, demonstrating both the workings of a vacuum and the growing power of natural philosophers and their new, rationalist model of the world.
Performance can reveal how expertise, experiments and scientific thinking influence, and are influenced by, our culture, our relationships and our desire for meaning and wonder. That was true in 1768, and it鈥檚 true today. At this year鈥檚 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, theatre, stand-up, performance art and a one-woman science-comedy-music show all leant science a human aspect.
Advertisement
Surrounded by wires and spreadsheets, the two astrophysicists of 聽(below) tease one another and scoff Jaffa Cakes while analysing telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The show鈥檚 been fact-checked by astrophysicists, but Immie Davies and Eve Cowley鈥檚 on-stage relationship is what matters most, as hope, scepticism, wonder, joy and pride are followed, inevitably, by humiliation. Cowley says that as show developed the team found ever-more parallels between science and art: 鈥淵ou鈥檙e chasing something, seeking something and can鈥檛 know what you鈥檒l find.鈥�
鈥� Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated absurdist clowning may not be the most efficient method of teaching economics. And I still don鈥檛 quite understand why her mimed quantitative easing dog blew up and floated away. Still, ChiffChaff is a moving show about trying to understand systems as abstractions while experiencing their real, devastating impacts. Lyons鈥檚 father is an economics professor, and her relationship with both father and subject is complex. Dyslexic, she struggles to follow his enthusiastic lectures, and when she lies awake at night, wracked with shame at barely managing to survive in the cash-strapped arts sector, he awkwardly comforts her with economics trivia (鈥淚t鈥檚 not your fault that it鈥檚 so hard, Elfie鈥� he assures her). Knowing and being clash as Lyons forces us to see her as both artist and product, screaming at the audience to 鈥淐ONSUME ME鈥�, before turning on her dazzling charm.
Flocking to the festival
Cutting between mimed experiments, projected graphs, recorded interviews with refugees and biologists, music and movement, (main picture) brings us into the extraordinary world of the tiny, brown migratory marsh warbler. By the time it arrives in the UK its song contains the memories of all the songs and sounds it has encountered in its extraordinary annual journey across Africa, over the Mediterranean and into Europe. Moving and enlightening, the performance reveals our profound interconnectedness, and the terrible vulnerability of those who are compelled to move.
Carys Eleri鈥檚 Lovecraft (not the sex shop in Cardiff) explores the often fraught relationship between understanding emotions and feeling them. Powerful pop ballads like Tit Montage and disco-bright visuals guide us through stories of care, heartbreak, abuse and eventual triumph. Can a relationship be addictive? If so, could understanding addiction help break the cycle? After reading 聽about the biochemistry of love, Eleri contacted neuroethicist being interviewed, Brian Earp. They spoke for hours over Skype, but the conversation left her fearing that love meant nothing, and the show is to some degree her rebuttal. Charismatic and vulnerable, Eleri weaves jokes, music and insights from multiple disciplines to weave a new kind of magic. She hugs the whole audience and asks us to learn from rat studies. Rats, it turns out, have the secret to living well: 鈥淪ocialise often and be kind all the time.鈥�
Standing up for expertise
The shows I caught at the Fringe give the lie to politician Michael Gove鈥檚 2016 claim that the British public 鈥渉ave had enough of experts鈥�. Some big surveys, too, suggest that he was wrong; in fact trust in scientists has . Rather, the public distrusts politicians and and sometimes for good reason. Examples of evidence abused or misused for political ends are common; Trump refutes the overwhelming evidence for climate change, while anti-feminist populists draw on (ignoring more egalitarian invertebrates) as evidence in favour of their preferred hierarchical social structure. and have deliberately funded or promoted research that cast doubt on the harm they cause.
It鈥檚 no longer enough to display expertise and evidence in a vacuum, and much can be learned from the current live performance scene. Give complex facts and difficult ideas some human and social context, and suddenly we can have a serious conversation about them.. The Edinburgh Fringe offered a snapshot of the shows in development this year. Zugunruhe聽is playing at聽Camden People鈥檚 Theatre in London on 23 and 24 Oct and no doubt other shows mentioned here will crop up again in the coming months. In the meantime there are many regular UK venues to explore. Be charmed by 鈥檚 boundless delight at explosions, dorky maths punchlines, and clever comedy songs. Visit , which helped researchers turn their work into stand-up comedy sets for ten years and has gigs across England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Belgium.
Full disclosure: I鈥檝e performed at that last one, and at聽聽an entertaining chance to laugh at insiders鈥� stories of lab work gone wrong, awkward academic politics, and mishaps backstage at the zoo (though if I were a cockatoo I鈥檇 start running now).
Lydia Nicholas is a researcher in ethics and culture at University College London
