Mike Stuart is a lecturer at the University of York. He is embarrassed that this post about science and comedy doesn’t contain a single joke.
A post by Mike Stuart
Practising scientists often find themselves in a position where existing resources are not enough. Maybe they have a good model, but they need measurements which can’t be gained via any of the usual methods. Or maybe the data is good, but none of the existing models can capture it well enough. In these situations, they must get creative.
While there is no guaranteed method for being creative, many rough guidelines exist. I’ve been working with scientists to identify and develop more such guidelines.[1] In this post, I want to consider what might seem like a surprising source of strategies for increasing creativity.
Here’s the idea. Coming up with creative solutions to problems when you don’t have a predetermined method sounds a lot like improvisation. Think jazz, dance, or comedy. Why? Improvisation is open-ended. It relies heavily on imagination. There is no fixed method, but there are guidelines. It’s possible to get better at it. Instruments and props can be used. While it is possible to do alone, it often takes place with others. Because the trajectory of a performance is not scripted or fully under conscious control, we can’t predict whether the outcome will be good, great, meh, or bad. I think to professional scientists, all of this will sound familiar as a description of how things go when standard methods fail.
If we can describe cases of scientific problem-solving as instances of improvisation, then it makes sense to highlight the insights of expert improvisors as a potential source of problem-solving strategies. I think it could be interesting to do this by looking at any kind of improvisation (music, dance, etc.), but I’m going to look at improv comedy. Spending time in lab meetings and interviewing scientists, I’m often struck by how funny scientists are, how important humour seems to be for their problem-solving process, and how similar scientific discovery and jokes are in the way that they combine conscious direction with unconscious development to break expectations and create something new and surprising.
Longform and shortform are the two main kinds of improv comedy. Shortform is exemplified by TV shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? Here, a set of constraints is given in advance, and performers have three or four minutes to develop it. We’ll focus on longform, which can also employ short scenes, but is freer in the sense that performers typically invent the “base reality” of their scenes together from scratch in real time, often in response to an audience prompt, and “the game” (the thing which ends up being funny) emerges spontaneously.
Just like the guidelines we see in science, recommendations for aspiring comics are not sacrosanct: “Seasoned, experienced, and extremely talented improvisers will break improv rules all the time” (Comedy Improv Manual, pg. 212). Here are some standard pieces of advice, collected from Tina Fey’s Bossypants, the Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improv Manual, and improv websites and online discussion boards.
Create a base reality
1. Establish the Who, What, and Where. The first sentences and actions in a scene won’t usually be funny, and that’s okay. You don’t want to dive straight into the deep end. Instead, define a background against which the unusual thing (to emerge later) can be contrasted.
2. Say Yes. Accept whatever world-defining suggestions are given by your partners. This helps ground the reality of the scene for both players and audience.
3. Say Yes And. Don’t merely accept; add information. This is because world-building should be collaborative. E.g., if your partner’s words and actions specify who the two of you are, accept it and add where you are and/or what you’re doing.
4. Make statements (don’t ask questions). Asking questions gives your partner the burden of world-building which, again, should be collaborative.
Find the game
5. Identify the first unusual thing. Something will eventually happen that departs from the way that things would go in real life. This can happen on purpose or unintentionally. E.g., in a scene about two people at a funeral, one player gets excited about something. This might be the first unusual thing.
6. Framing. Signal to your partner that something unusual has happened (e.g., by repeating it, or by reacting to it emotionally).
7. Find the game. The game is what makes the scene funny. It’s not a single joke but a pattern of behaviour that starts from the unusual thing. The game can always be stated abstractly. Thus, the game in this famous Monty Python skit isn’t that someone is trying to return a dead parrot to a pet shop and the shop owner refuses to acknowledge that the parrot is dead. The game is that one person refuses to acknowledge an obvious fact, and this is a game that can be played in an infinite number of ways.
8. The game doesn’t take off all at once. The pattern is negotiated and emerges over time, depending on how each person reacts to the unusual thing and to each other. E.g., the players might decide (via their actions and speech) that one person on a blind date is extremely afraid of commitment, or worried about their pet snails at home, or is only on the date to win a bet, etc., while the other simply reacts as a normal person would.
Play the game
9. If then (instead of Yes And). Once the game is established ask yourself: if this unusual thing is true, what else is true? And why is it true?
10. Heighten. Increase the absurdity (but not too much) while still following the pattern.
11. Explore. Don’t increase absurdity ad infinitum. Pause a bit after each heightening to flesh things out and maintain realism. E.g., a character who is the voice of reason might explain or justify the absurd behaviour of another character. This is called “making the silly smart.”
12. Commit. Make your character and the scene as believable as possible by trying to believe in it yourself.
13. There are no mistakes.
Some of the above advice could be helpful for scientists facing recalcitrant problems. When faced with such a situation, they could begin a series of “scenes” with colleagues in which they imagine new base realities, listen carefully to each other, and collectively develop each suggestion into something believable. At some point, an unusual thing will be highlighted, and reactions to this thing could crystalize into a pattern of extrapolation and heightening. After some time playing this game, if things aren’t going in an interesting direction, someone else might end the scene and start a new one. And this could continue until attention runs out, or an idea emerges which is thought to be good enough to pursue further. During such a process, no idea is too absurd, and absurdity (perhaps a measure of difference from accepted wisdom) is valued and treated with care.
In real science, things are rarely this free and open, and the improvisational nature of problem-solving is usually not explicit. Making it explicit, perhaps even signalling a clear beginning and end for improv time, would be helpful for several reasons.
First, it would highlight that at least in this one part of science, scientists must be totally free from the usual conservative pressures of science. Through the use of problem sets and labs exercises that merely reenact historical experiments, science education produces scientists who have little confidence in their own imaginations and see little value in using imagination. As a result, rather than going out on a limb when necessary and exploring new base realities, scientists seek out research projects that allow them to use standard methods. Or they seek out more confident collaborators who can shoulder the imaginative work. Such a scientist might never learn to improvise properly. They say Yes but not And. They aren’t on the lookout for the unusual thing, and they aren’t prepared to find and play the game. What should have happened instead is that young science students are encouraged to practice building up new base realities on an equal footing with others and heightening and exploring them. As Tina Fey says, “YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute. It’s your responsibility to contribute. Always make sure you’re adding something to the discussion. Your initiations are worthwhile.” While it is easy to stay quiet and be critical, scientists, especially members of traditionally marginalized groups, must be made to feel comfortable enough to make bold statements, and not feel judged or punished for doing so.[2] Explicitly adopting improv principles can help with this.
A second reason in favour of making the improvisational nature of scientific problem-solving explicit is that it allows us to ask a new question: What are the “games” that could work for science improv? In comedy, hundreds of games have been identified. E.g., a character might be over-committed to a particular cause, or irrationally afraid of something normal. If scientists consciously engaged in something like improv, good games would naturally be found. Presumably, the absurdity would be scientific instead of psycho-social. Perhaps one person refuses to believe a certain obvious fact and everyone else tries to convince them, or players take up the position of historical scientists, or scientific objects themselves (e.g., molecules, genes, measurement devices, models, etc.). A list of successful games would be a very useful thing to have.
To wrap up, the suggestion isn’t that scientists should start taking comedy improv workshops (though this wouldn’t hurt).[3] It’s that scientists should start seeing the imaginative parts of their problem-solving practices as improvisational, and then seriously considering applying insights from professional improvisors. Doing so could be pragmatically, epistemically, and ethically beneficial, not just for individual scientists, labs and departments, but for the structure and organization of science as a whole.[4]
Notes
[1] See, e.g., here, here, and here.
[2] Some strategies for how to increase confidence surrounding the use of scientific imagination can be found in Stuart and Sargeant (2024).
[3] While I haven’t seen anything written about science as improv in the sense intended here, there are scientists who extoll the virtues of improv comedy for scientists (see here, here, and here), and there are organizations that run improv workshops for scientists as team-building exercises or to improve science communication skills (see here, here, and here).
[4] Thanks to Sophia Efstathiou for urging me to think about science and improvisation, and to the audience at the conference which she co-organized called “IMPROVISE! Methods for times of uncertainty” (2023), as well as the audience of “Against Method: Towards an Anthropology of Imagination” in Moscow (2024). Thanks also to Vincent Hsu and Chris McCarroll, who have both taught me a lot about improvisation in general, and Manjit Kochhar, who has taught me about improv comedy in particular.
References
Fey, Tina. 2012. Bossypants: The Hilarious Bestselling Memoir from Hollywood Comedian and Actress. 1st edition. Sphere.
Stuart, Michael T., and Hannah Sargeant. 2024. “Inclusivity in the Education of Scientific Imagination.” In Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM, edited by E. Hildt, K. Laas, C. Miller, and E. Brey. London: Routledge.
Walsh, Matt, Ian Roberts, and Matt Besser. 2013. Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual. New York, NY: Comedy Council of Nicea.