 All right, and we're going to put this one down. All right, how many people read scientists and went, oh my God, she's just going to PowerPoint us to death? Nobody. Oh, beautiful. You know where you are. Applied improv. Wonderful. It is an honor to be here. I actually wanted to start with just a thank you. How many people have been improvising for a while? Let's just say a while. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. How many people feel like they've been doing applied improv for a while? Excellent. Thank you. How many people are like, you know what, this is still brand new to me? Excellent. Excellent. And my, I'm really, I went so fast because I'm so interested in knowing. I actually want people to be able to see each other as well in this, but I love technology. I love science. I'm an inner geek, even if people don't know it. Oh my God, science was the worst thing ever. I can't believe I ever had to take a class in it. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yes to all of that. I wanted to start. I'm already starting. I'm going to have multiple starts. I use that line all the time. I want to start. I want to start. I want to start. I'm really interested in why people decided to come. Thank you for coming. You had a lot of options. I really appreciate it. This is lovely. I'm glad you're here, honestly. But you chose this. You have questions. You have questions from being longtime improvisers to being brand new to being inner geeks to like, I can't stand this. I want you in your bag somewhere. You actually have pen and paper. I want you to write down. We're going to use these later. Just some of the questions that brought you into the room because little later we're going to have a panel. And Mia Anderson, who is commuting in from her home base of Brooklyn, is on the wonderful, timely, never late Long Island Railroad. Yes. So we'll have a grand appearance and we will welcome her grandly when she arrives. So go ahead and write down some of your questions. And I'm going to ask at the same time, if there are maybe two or three people who would say, what are the questions that brought you into this room? Do you have a question that brought you into this room? And maybe not a question. Maybe it was like, you know what, I heard Raquel was really fabulous. She's amazing. And I just want to see her. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Wonderful. Thank you. Wonderful. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. So please. And with six graders. Yes, Carolyn is excited. So we're going to ask that question again to the panel. So creating the human face of science. What a topic, right? So part of the question is when you think of science, what are the faces you imagine? Right? Is it the hundreds of colleagues that look like me? Right? Those are my computing scientists, my black women in computing. What does it mean to create the human face of science? Is it, is it our countenance? Is it our demographic? Is it gender? Sure, it includes that, but is that all of it? So I want to invite you into this journey that I took, that little girl, to becoming a scientist, computational cell biologist, who is bringing improvisation and play to research institutions, to graduate programs, to professional societies, to scientists in pharmaceutical companies, or whoever will bring me in to play. And I think it's a particular journey because I started it so long ago. And I'm going to go back to my thank you so that I don't forget all the work that you applied improvisers and improvisers have done in the world made my work possible. Thank you. Thank you. So we're going to spend like 20 minutes. I am going to go through an academic routine PowerPoint. Just as prompts. Exactly. But I also, I have a request and I was going to gather you guys. So you guys are written down any questions that you had that you might have brought in, keep them, add to them. Again, I'm going to ask you to pass them in later. This is one of the things I do, at least at conferences, where people are sitting and they're not used to playing. And it's like you want to have interaction and they're shy because they've been looking at books all their lives for about 12, 15 years. Write something and have them pass it in. And I'm going to continue. So this is my activist journey to performance and building community in science. And I want you to ask questions as they come along. I've never presented to a room full of improvisers or people who want to be improvisers. I'm usually presenting to the person who's like, I think this is supposed to be good for me. I'm not sure this is, why does anybody in science ever do this? Do we really have to? Does this work for me? That's who I'm usually speaking to. So I've had to do some work to change. You get to help me by asking questions along the way. So I was born in the 60s. And I was thinking about this before I started presenting it, which is it's emotional to say this now in a way that it's never been emotional to say it. In the same way that after the election in 2016, when I went to do a session on diversity and inclusion at supercomputing, a conference called supercomputing, I had to deal with that we're having a conversation of diversity in a room full of people who voted for Trump, who voted for Hillary, who voted for Bernie, who voted for...Rosanne Barr, right? And who were then going to have a conversation on diversity. It was emotional. How do you create that? So I was born in the 60s, and as a child, I grew up in the 70s, I wanted to be Martin Luther King, Jesus or Gandhi. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. It may have something to do with the fact that I grew up in a mixed family, black, white, parents for poor working class, mothers poor white, dad was working class black, who moved up to Sonoma County, California. It was still residential, agricultural, just north of San Francisco. My neighbors were Hell's Angels, wealthy farmers, welfare recipients, Native Americans, and us. Yes, exactly. Phew. Thank you for that. I say that because it's a very diverse grouping of people, and I am Sonoma County proud. This is my John. John was a bellowing guy from upstate New York who would tell you that everybody was speaking a second language. And he would say it in this voice where you're like, oh my God, he's going to cost me. And he's like, unless you're speaking a Native American language, you're speaking a second language. I was like, yes, right? Amen. But how did you have to hear him? This is one of the guys I had coffee with. I'm Sonoma County proud. And I grew up with people being recognizing the failures, not because I was smart enough as this little kid, but I somehow knew the world wasn't right. Maybe it was because our family was still being torn apart even though we had great sense of coming together. Maybe it was because my prom queen friend was still miserable. And I'm thinking, how are you, prom queen friend, having emotional pain when you supposedly check all the boxes? I left my conversation with Nina the other day because all this other stuff wasn't really going to go very quick. I didn't know about psychotherapy. Actually we had a lot of mental health issues in our family. I didn't trust mental health institutions. I didn't want to do that. The labeling of the poor and the black as mentally ill, not to mention the gay, it's problematic. So that was not what I wanted to do. But I wanted to be a scientist. How come? Well, I got to do this because it's like, here are these white guys. I still can't do this. These white guys, Jewish, Protestant, atheist, Mr. Alton, my rugby teacher. I played rugby. Mr. Kozak, who turned out to be a quartet player, who was the corkiest, funnest biology teacher I had. So I wanted to be like them. So they inspired me. So that was part of why I wanted to do a day job. And I wanted to say this because part of the politic that we develop around identity is that you have to be the same. And I don't believe that. It's not my experience. We can't all be the same. There's no way to be the same. I've learned from so many different people. The question is, how do we learn from each other? That's the politic that I bring to this. So I chose to be a scientist also because I wanted power. Yep, I wanted power. Science is in that position. Who's looking to get science justification for their work? Right? Because it's the validating, legitimizing thing. And I knew, like, hey, when scientists say something, people listen. Well, I want to say some stuff to help make the world better. I want people to listen to me. I'm going to be a scientist. I also knew that science had done some bad things. 40 years of a syphilis study on the African-American community when they had a cure is a bad thing. That's how we now have ethical standards in our medical practices. Studying blackheads. And who knows this research? Okay, a good number of people. Most of my undergraduate, most scientists, a lot of students don't necessarily know this history of the relationship of science and how the question of what's ethical or others, and yet they understand that this is possible. So in this case, good science at the time where black people were dumber, not because of sociological segregation and not providing education. My grandmother wasn't allowed to go to school. It was because our schools were smaller. So the mismeasure of man presented how we embed our biases into our science. So again, I wanted to have power. I wanted to say what existed, and I wanted to help all of us, all of us, have something better in our lives. So I went to graduate school with that love. So, so, hmm. So going to graduate school, who's been to graduate school? Yeah, all right. It was fun, wasn't it? You got to ask lots of wonderful questions. Yes? Yes? And you had lots of people respond and say, yes, and that's fabulous. Some people had that experience, actually. Awesome, awesome, lovely. Were you in a master's program, a PhD master's? And a PhD? Excellent. Disciplines, just really quick. Excellent. So, so, one of the things I say to my scientist, one, I do this performance in front of a scientist, right? I love the audience. I'm saying this because one of the questions, is one of the questions in the audience, how do you get scientists to do stuff with you? I love them. I love them publicly. I'm not having sex in a bathroom, but I love them publicly, right? It's a rare thing. So, we go into science and we love stuff and we're going to graduate school and you're starting to ask all these questions, like, how can we give hormones to mice to look at how the eggs develop? How do we know that the way, what we're studying from that is the same that happens in the body? Well, we've done it that way for years. But how do we know that what we're giving them actually is replicating what happens normally? Well, we've done it that way for like 10 years. That's how we do it. But, right, so now, I think my advisor's honest answer was, it may have been a couple of things. It may have been like, you know what, I'm going through my family issues right now. I'm barely hearing you. I can't tell you that I'm having a hard time, which I only discovered later. It may have been like, I don't know that I have a good question. Maybe that's beyond the scope. And really, I don't know that that's the question I need right now, because we need to do the experiment. Those are all the backdrop that he couldn't figure out how to say in a conversation with his new student, who's a woman of color, and he's an Italian white guy. Anyway, all of this, I'm filling space. I'm going to keep going. I don't mean to fill so much. We end up isolated. Did you feel isolated in your... No, some other than you wonderful people who have this great experience, which you should share with the world all the time of what it was like for you, because we end up isolated, not knowing each other's experiences, right? So did others feel somewhat isolated or alienated? Yeah. So that's one of the trainings and things that comes up, is how do I have this passion in these small pages? It's a little hard, right? So we're taught that you have to check your identities at the door, right? So many professionals. This is not just science. Many professionals develop an identity that says, check who you are at the door. So for this guy, Kenneth Lamb, he's like, I'm an NFL football player. Hey, you know, people know that about me already. What I love about this is he's smiling in both pictures. He's also a mathematician at MIT. He didn't check both. He has both, right? So the question is, how do we have all this? So there's this lovely, right? So we check, we either check our other joyous, who was surprised about the survey last night from the Al Nalda, that it was joy and excitement was the number one, right? Exactly. I was surprised as well, because we've institutionalized an identity that says, to be a scientist, you must talk like this. And so now I'm on to my next slide. And so we'll tell you about Lenore Fulani, but oh wait a minute, I have to give you a thousand more details and I'm not going to look at you because really you're not supposed to pay attention to me. You're just supposed to pay attention to my data, right? And this is beautiful data. It has a round circle. In fact, it's not quite a complete circle, but if you check the diameter and the radius, what you'll see, that's our training. It's a professional identity. It's institutionalized and it limits us. It isolates us in the same way that graduate school does. I was fortunate. I met, and Barbara heard about this woman from, I met Lenore Fulani. She was the first black woman, first woman, as an independent to be on the ballot in all 50 states for president. I was like, I heard about her in 1991 as I went to graduate school and I was like, how did I, wait a minute, did you hear my background? How did I not know of her? Because she was leading at that time a black, red, pro-gay, pro-socialist, multi-racial, right, organization. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of me. That's kind of me. I became, to my advisor, Shagrin, not only a graduate student, but a political activist, an organizer, a political organizer. Who went on the learning journey at the All Stars? If anybody? A couple? Great. The All Stars is also co-founded by Lenore Fulani. And the activity is to create the world together. One, we're already in the world together. We already, the scares that we're having are because we're in the world together. Not all of us were in El Paso. We all felt El Paso. We all felt that. We're feeling the world. We are together. The question is, what do we want to create together? And one of the stages I learned that on, was on the street corner. There's a performance. Here's a stage. Hi, take a minute for democracy. Hi, take a minute for democracy. Intervoice. Oh, crap, this is really hard. I don't really want to talk to anybody. I wish I could go. Hi, take a minute for democracy. Hi, hi. Take a minute for youth development. This was a performance. I learned about performance. And so I, and I also learned that you didn't have to study to change the world, because I thought I would change people's minds by studying things and giving them science facts and making all that good stuff happen. Instead you had to engage in it. And I learned by producing the all stars that if you could perform on stage, you could perform in life. How many believe that in this room? Exactly. That's the message that I take to scientists. You can perform on stage. You can perform in life. And that there's a world movement taking place. The AIN conference is part of it. I'm saying I want to develop my compassion alongside my technology. I put our work in a world scope. Scientists have big dreams. Right? I wanted my name on a star for a while. Right? That was the best thing. I'm like, I'm going to look. I'm going to put my name on a star. I'm going to find a protein. And it's going to be called Rock Hills protein. Like Lou Gehrig's disease? Hey, there was, you know, like what? Lou, I mean Lou didn't like it, but there are other things. There are other things that we find and we discover. We're aspirational, ambitious. Right? But we're not taught how to be with other people. So I give them a big stage to play on, to make a small step in, so that they can grow. That's my invitation consistently. All right. So I know I've been asking questions a long way and I'm going to ask this is like one of those, what is the time right now? Okay. We're going to come back to this. Humanizing. Because I don't want to talk much longer. How are you doing? Good. Yeah. Okay. Cool. As soon as you're like, okay, I need to stretch. Can everybody just do this real quick? You're lovely. Exactly. Exactly. And as you feel the need to do that, it will help me know what to do. So you are invited at any time to do this. Right? Because I will respond to you. I do want to do this. Oh, back. Sorry. Go back. You're sitting next to somebody you know, right? No. Excellent. Woo-hoo. All right. I'm still going to do the stand up and talk and find somebody you don't know as well. And I'm going to give you a direction. So as you're finding people. So if you can, just to hear the direction. So we make the road by walking is a book by Horton about of a dialogue between Miles Horton and Paulo Ferrari about their work in adult education. Always exist. And all of our work in many ways is walking into a space that doesn't yet exist. It's bringing together some passion of yours to where you want to be. Right? So I'm changing this question from how did you come to improv? Because we've been asking each other that. But what is it for you? I've been telling you my version of this. What is it for you that you want to bring of improv to wherever you're going? Or what is it of you that you think you want to bring to science? Or what is that combination that's unique? That's a path that you're creating? Share that with your partner. Right? Go ahead. Yeah. What is the, what are you wanting to create? What's the new thing of bringing improv to something? What's the path you're trying to carve? You're welcome. What's the path you're trying to create? And of course, make sure you're sharing the voice. When you feel like you're coming to a close, wave at me. When you feel like you're coming to a close, wave at me. 10 seconds, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Thank you. Thank you. Have a seat. Have a seat. What is it? What is it? What was that like? I got a lovely, it was a little deeper? Deeper than, I'm assuming people are hearing each other. Is that true? No. Thank you. Great, great, great. So it was, it was deeper and it felt that, you know, it went beyond just the how I took a class and I found in this logistical place, but rather where did I start from and whatever I'm trying to go to as a path? Please. I don't have anything I'm creating new was part of that response. Please. This is where I'm trying to go succinctly. The first time I took it to the vision instead of just the process. Martha. Mm-hmm. Do this seem simple in some ways? Well, I think sometimes we over stylize what we're doing. We think it has to fit a particular look to bring it in rather than building with who's in the room and what's needed at the moment. I think that's all of our passions of like being an improv. I'm going to say this, you can disagree, but like being willing to be changed in our directions. Right? This is not any, this is not the version of the talk that I imagined this morning. Aren't we glad? Right? But just those small changes and I think that's what we're always working. That's what I'm always working to do is to help us have who we are, not in boxes, not in categories, but in a way that we're human with each other in our hopes. My God, isn't that, I think that's emotional. I just get emotional saying that. Right? And again, if you're taught how to hide behind things so that you can narrowly focus on just what you're supposed to report, how are you to be human with others? So the work is using, is being improvisational. Improv helps us in our ability to be improvisational. Human beings are improvisational. It has to be there as an ability to be built upon. That's the beauty of what was created as we now get to see more of who we are as human beings. And the work I do is to help us to be with other people, to be vulnerable, intelligent, and emotional. Nobody likes to go into a box and be by themselves. Right? Unless you choose to be and then there's a whole thing. You choose it rather than being added to you. So that's the structuring, that's the culture change we're working on. And it's the beauty of what the Alnaldis Center has done in that by the need, scientists need to talk about their work with others. They may not always like it. We don't like the view that, our beautiful speaker yesterday, somebody helped, thank you, Pablo showed. None of us like that. But we were like, I got to go show up to this conference. I don't want to go too big. I got to promote my work and I got to talk about it. So will somebody help me talk about my work so people are interested in it? Because I love my work. I've spent my lifetime to get here to produce it. I love it. I want to share it with people. But I can't use that voice. Could you help me just communicate a message, not make it too small? I want people to understand I don't want to have to dumb it down. That's what we say. So the beauty of the work is using what they need. Some of Gary Hirsch said this. What are they looking for? What are they needing? And meeting them to bring the improv. So again, I go back to my thank you. Thank you for giving me a tool to introduce performance. I was learned performance. Hi, take a minute for democracy. Hi, youth development. Performance transforms lives. I learned it in this grand performance, not from theater other than theater in our lives. And improv. 1996 performance of a lifetime. Cat's book coming out. But the work going into the corporate setting was, ha, ha, ha. I've got it. I can use improv, which is used for executives in corporate settings and for this like really high powered stuff to give us ambitious scientists something to do. Do we like it? Does it help us? I don't know. And actually mostly, so the improv was the tool, my ambition was is the stuff that I'm learning from grassroots organizing, youth development helpful to us. I don't know that it is. That's a nice, you know, arrogant thing. I'm kind of arrogant at different points, but I didn't, I wanted to be an organizer. It's like, is it helpful for us? So Ori alone, I'm just going to have to go find Ori in Israel. Ori alone and I talked at Cold Spring Harbor just down the street with a scientist. He's like, great, come up to Harvard and let's do a workshop. Because we're colleagues in that way. It's systems biologists, computational biologists. So I asked the question, is it helpful to us? And they said yes. It helps us see each other. It helps us be more comfortable. It gives me an opportunity to not worry about what I have to say, oh, I've never paid attention to what my body or somebody else's body was doing. But I started playing and asking people around me, can we play? This is a super computing conference. These are engineers. These are hardware people. These are all the data scientists or data scientists like groupings that you're talking about. And they're what a colleague of mine, Dion at Google said, he's like, you don't realize how those simple things you do are so powerful to us. Because they get to be seen. So people knew that this thing about Raquel. She loves performance. She loves building community. And there was an NSF grant, National Science Foundation grant that was at the time, it was called Creative IT. Creative IT. And it was looking at innovative uses of, and it's mainly around design thinking, arts, visual design. This was, again, this is 2010, 2009. And my friend's like, you've got to apply for this grant. This is all about you. So I got a grant called improvisational theater for computing scientists. I wrote a grant and it was awarded. That's the proper language. And I went around the country giving talks, doing little bits of exercises saying, again, what do you think? And I met people who were doing similar related things. And I was like, we got to get together. I had some money. I said, let's get together. We got into Farmington, Connecticut in January. The best time to go to Farmington, Connecticut. Yes. 40 people came. 40 people came. And shared about their work creating virtual worlds, simulated worlds in which kids and adults could interact and do something perform. Computing clubs where people were kids who were from community colleges, this Contra Costa College, were actually doing, it's a simulated mathematics. And I can't even, it's like computer mathematics. But they're being related to as capable beyond themselves, performing something other than what they're related to or who they are. Kathy Saled and her thing in the video said, there's this thing of history where there's both your past, your present and your future. It's historical. What is it for working class kids to be given high-class education in the sense of all the resources putting there? That's a transformative experience. It's a performance in life and in the world. I was meeting those people and I said, you've got to talk to so-and-so and so-and-so. And we got together and they said, oh, so we're going to do this next year, right? Because they got together. They met each other. They were inspired. They created new collaborations, new projects. They played. We played. You're getting a rare performance of Rock Health talking so long. Cultivating ensembles. The name was chosen intentionally. Do you hear ensembles? Have you ever heard that word before? Yeah. It was the word that linked between the theater person that I was working with and myself, like the improv because she didn't relate to being an improviser. She related to being a theater director, an experimental theater, but ensembles. Cultivating ensembles and STEM education and research. We come together every two years and it brings together people like Pranit Namburi who is a neuroscientist who uses dance to inspire his research and his research to inspire his dance. So with all of that, these beautiful people who come together and learn the things about cultivating ensembles, I feel like this is one of those slides where I was like do I actually need to say this slide to you guys because this is something I think we have, right? But again, it's this activity of inviting scientists to build community in a way that supports them developing and from there you get these things that are leadership capacity, communication, team-building, emotional intelligence. But it's something that we co-create and we're invited to co-create that what Al Mulder said last night about we have to include the intellectual because that's part of who we are. It's part of the game. We love making intellectual games out of everything. It's the hardest part about leading improv workshops with scientists, at least for me. It's like we play a game and they're like, oh, did you see that pattern? Oh, okay. And the pattern went from this and then John did, and it's nothing about them. It's not the personal experience, right? It's just like, oh, there's that game. There's that science game. There's that math game, right? And so my work is to help us get to feeling, right? And for me, this is an activism because there's something powerful when scientists say what we need in the world is compassion. We can give you data, too, but there's something powerful in that. I want to hear, and then in our technical work, again, like what does it mean to bring it into our technical work? Well, how do I collaborate with you? You're speaking numerical methods and I do, you know, it's symbolic. Well, it's actually the different mathematical simulation pieces where, like, so if you're doing, okay, geek speak, if you're doing differential equation stuff versus, or it's populations and yada, yada, yada, yada. Most of you don't care about what, I think I just said gibberish. Don't think I said jargon. What if I said gibberish, right? Differential equation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, mathematics and supercomputing. That's right. Say it again? Yes, yes, yes, thank you. Give me a prompt. Compassion. Compassion, yeah. Compassion for each other and compassion in the world and our ability to love publicly. So I say, people, I give a talk to scientists. I gave this at a LGBTQ reception at the American Meteorological Society. And in that context, I said one of the things about scientists is they are the S on the LGBTQIA, at an S. Because we love the weirdest things. They're small. They're large. It's kind of queer. It's awesome. And we all need to come out publicly about what I love. So the exercise that I did before, again, is that invitation to like, how do we give what we love and invite people into that journey with us and learning to make each other look good. It transforms how we work. So why do I say performance, play, and creativity? Because our science is informed to each other and to connect with it. To give. I don't usually use the connect word, but to give who we are in this more public way. And that's what I wanted to give you before inviting to this stage a panel. And the reason I'm inviting a panel, just Caroline and Mia may be here, she's still. The Long Island Railroad has been unkind, but she may still arrive. Anyway, that is the story of Raquel's journey as an activist to doing improv with scientists. And then we'll go into the panel, but I want to like wrap up that part of it and then we'll do the questions. And why scientists are turning to improv is because they know there's something to give, again, both about their stories to the world and to be inviting people into their work and to not be alienated from one another and to be able to collaborate with each other. That's why we're doing that. And there's hundreds and thousands of people doing it, really. Thank you. Before I invite Caroline up, are there any, what do you need? Questions, response, stretch. Go ahead and stretch while you do that. I know. Because I need to stretch. Cat. Great. So, did you hear some of what I, how did you, so say, mm-hmm. So the game that I created as we were doing this talk is one of the things I do with scientists. So I create this, I give who I am and I say, I want to invite you to give who you are in a similar way. And so I create an exercise that says, and I love that Aretha Sills said this of the challenge of what it is to play with. So I work very hard to get out of the chair. I work very, I am one of the most playful people in the room, I think, Mary, and you're in the room with me in these contexts. But so it is the delight, the discovery, the questions, the not knowing what we did. I'm doing that in every exercise. And so, otherwise it's like synchronized clap in an auditorium. Right? It's, I'm going to borrow, do people know the synchronized clap? Some do, some don't. Excellent. Here we go. So, and this will be so, we're here. So here's a synchronized clap. So go ahead and stand. Put your stuff down. And you can be where you are, but you might want to get closer even within a row with the people in your row. Move close, make your rows like this a bit. Stay in the same rows. Just stand. Excellent. So synchronized clap, the synchronized clap is when you take a single clap, it's going to start from this side of the row. And that person is going to turn to the person next to them. And they're going to clap at the same time. Right? So, Marion, where'd you go? Oh, your partner. People got an idea of what I'm saying. I was going to get it up so much. So, and you're going to clap at the same time. After that happens, you continue to pass the clap down the row. Turn and pass. Go ahead. They're going. They're fine. And focus on... Mia, you're in it as well. Great. And then pass it back. Exactly. So you're just synchronized exactly. Lovely. And back and... And sing. Give yourselves a round of applause. So we might play that for an... It's so interesting. Do you know what, I think there's always this underestimation. Like when you have this experience of people know something, that you forget that actually we need to continue to play. Right? And so thank you for that invitation and the prompt on the synchronized clap. And so that very simple thing, again, getting people together to create together is one of the activities that I'll do in a large auditorium. It depends on the goals of what we're doing. So part of... So one of my funny lines is, how do you feel? I swear at scientists, I use F words and four letter words. How do you feel? Was it fun? Play? Game? Right? Four letter words. Because the conversation is the focus. It is there changing their understanding of what it is they've experienced. It's how together from that experience are they experienced and what do they think about what the other person felt? Things like that. Other... People wrote down some questions as well, right? Yes, let's collect the questions at this point. And is there another question burning at the moment? Yes, please. Yeah. You would like recipes. You like recipes. They're excellent. I got you. No, no, no. Who else is looking for recipes at the moment? So this is the challenge. And some people who know me well can help me with this. The reason I talk about we make the road by walking is because it's very difficult to have recipes. Although there are many good exercises that are out there and I have a resource and I'm happy to share different things that I've done, but I've borrowed from everything that you do. And I think the part of the hard and the part of the reason that people do look at the training and train the trainer activity is it's a question of how are you bringing you in the midst of those recipes? Right? In the exercises. So at this moment as we got the cards, I would like to invite to the stage Carolyn Silphin and Mia Anderson. Please give them a round of applause as they come up. Wonderful. Oh, wonderful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. So this is the reason I wanted to... And other people... Yeah. One, I build community and these are my colleagues in building community. So again, another round of applause for them. Also, because what it means again whether recipes or other activities, how we come to this question of bringing improvisation or performance to science is very different. We come from very different backgrounds and our work is to have again this multiplicity of voices in what we're doing in different responses. So I'm going to do a very short intro and then ask you guys to just add to your introductions. So Mia Anderson is phenomenal. One. That's just phenomenal. She is an actor. She is a director. She is a writer. I have known her for a while and I met her as she was producing what I call community theater, but importantly for me, she was producing theater that required directing and developing people who have never acted. And she's a beautiful, loving, caring director and improvisational in that. Would you like to add to that who you are at the moment? Okay. Thank you. Carolyn Silphin is a theoretical cosmologist. I love that. I love that. And a performer. And one of the people that I look to for talking about how we do compassion in science. She is an educator. She works in the universities and is part of the physics community. So again, we have different locations to this. Mia Anderson again is in New York both acting and in films and producing your monologue which is beautiful. And fabulous. And would you add to a little bit of who you are? Whatever you want to choose. So one identity that I think might resonate with the room is I'm a collaborative learner. And I found that to be rather unique in theoretical physics. And I think that's been part of my journey into focusing more on facilitating learning and coming to AIN. So growing up I was very frustrated with how science was often taught and watching the natural curiosity that all children are natural scientists watching it be crushed in my classmates. So there's that fuel as well. And then getting to grad school and realizing that some of my professors didn't understand what I meant by collaboration. You know, oh, you want to collaborate. Okay, you do this. I do this. Let's talk at the end of the week. And it wasn't that they were trying to, you know, not trying, they were trying to be helpful. They just didn't understand what I meant. So how about, how was it that you came to the science work? Let's go there instead. And again, so just to give you a context, is what some of the things, so I gave my whole journey from like child in Sonoma County and Martin Luther King and wanting to, you know, make the world a better place and how fabulous that is. And, you know, scientists need to be part of creating compassion and that the AIN community has been part of leading the work that I bring in as well as, of course, the work with Fulani and things like that. And they did a little bit of games. Just to give you a context. Yes, you're welcome. So I am not a scientist. Not, not, not, not. Was not interested in science in school? Never, never, never. Everyone's a scientist at some level. Really? Okay, I'm a scientist when I'm putting together my face serums and like, then I'm a scientist. Yeah, so like I'm outside at? No, not very much so. So how I came to this work actually is Raquel, is through our friendship. She approached me about working with her with Improv Science because of the work I did with Drag King Sluts and Goddesses. Yes, that was the name of the show because that's the kind of girl I am. So, but yeah, it was called DKSG and it was a 14 woman, woman of color, a cabaret troupe. And so when Raquel approached me about working with Improv Science and we sat in the Starbucks one day and we came up with the first curriculum for professional presentations and it sort of developed from there. So Starbucks was our friend. Exactly, exactly. So going to one of the questions that we have here is what can be done to make science cool and appealing to youngsters? According to you, what can we do to move scientists or help embrace or incorporate Improv? This is multiple, so I'm just getting them out here. And do we get scientists, how do we get scientists excited about science communication? And how can something drive science? How can art drive science? I think these are all really good questions and I'm going to ask, I'm not good at taking cues. So I'm going to ask you to save the time out loud and when we end. Yes, that'd be great. Yep, perfect. Thank you. Yay. So I think let's play with these questions. So I guess one of them kind of and we also had the question about the sixth graders, kids are natural scientists, I think. And so giving them the ability to, I see a lot of parallels between Improv and the scientific method. Certainly the first part of the scientific method. We're observing, right? We all observe. And so just having kids observe and look for patterns. And talk to me afterwards if you want to know specific patterns. I'm a big fan of Eugenia at Keena at Radker's and the Investigative Science Learning Environment. So she's got a bunch of specific observations that it's mostly at the high school and university, but she also has some for younger. And so you observe specific things that have patterns and then let the kids observe that and then, okay, what could possibly explain those patterns and generate all the possible explanations you can come up. Don't get out of the head of dirt, right? Like don't try to be right. So what could explain that? One of the answers that threw her for a curveball that one of her university students gave her was, you put alcohol on a blackboard and you observe what happens and it goes away. And so one possible hypothesis that the curveball that a student threw at her was, well, it's alive and it walked off. And so then that was when she had a gun before. So how could we test that hypothesis? And so there's a creative process there. Okay. How could we test that? Here are some materials. Let's design an experiment to test that. And the prediction is, okay, if this idea, this wild idea is true and we do this experiment, then what would we predict would happen? Did that happen or not? If not, then, well, maybe our assumptions were wrong or maybe that model is wrong. If yes, then... Do you see that as improvisation or the improv, or do you? Because to generate those ideas is a, it's your playing, I guess your partner is nature. You're playing with nature. Does that? And so you need to be in that creative frame of mind which so often gets in science class. I was thinking from there as well what it is to do the warm-up. Who came for the warm-up? Like, how that plays into what you're talking about or how do you think about warm-ups or games in the context of the environment of asking those questions? Yes. And this is why I'm here and eager to learn from all of you. I've been so grateful to learn from Raquel. It's often really hard to get students to start to do this, to take some time because they come in, especially a lot of my students are pre-medical students. They're very, very focused and very used to, what do you want me to put down? How am I supposed to test this idea? What possible explanations am I supposed to write down? To create a classroom culture that allows students to be playful and curious and get back in touch with that childhood wonder and curiosity of how does this stuff work? Improv games, warm-ups, et cetera can be very helpful for that. So two truths and a lie. I've used it with undergraduates just as a way of having people talk when they wouldn't talk otherwise and then having all of the things on a board so that then you could talk about them making things public as a way because otherwise we're just trying to get it right as you're saying. It's one of the games that I play with. I'm working on that. What are the recipes or what are the games people play as we're responding? So that's why I inserted that. Mia, do you have one of the questions that you want to... Sure, what was the question? How art can... Art can drive science. Art can drive science. I'm going to use a sort of example and it seems like I may be getting rid of the subject but just stay with me. So I think of the film Hidden Figures and after seeing Hidden Figures the excitement that it saw even amongst my own friends who are a little older than undergrad but the excitement like we were like oh my goodness we want to be Catherine Johnson and we want to put formulas on the wall and we want somebody to come to us and like really need us and you know I mean like who wouldn't want that and I think... So I bring that up besides the fact that they were fabulous women but I bring it up because there is something accessible in that and I think that the challenge of science is that science is seen as something inaccessible and knowing... I was very... I was fortunate when I went to school in New York I had a very comprehensive black history program so I came out knowing more than just George Washington cover but you know on a show Jackson and on and on and on but I know that's not the experience of everyone unfortunately and but having that background it gives a choice and I think being able I think that the stories like there was a show that came out this year at the Assemble Studio Theater and it was about... I'm going to say again his name the father of OBGYN he had that statue of him OB1? No OBGYN I don't write me up yet but they have a statue of him so anyway he did his experiments on slaves and so and you can imagine there wasn't concern for anesthesia so cause and on and on and on so anyway I tell that story because that show was hugely successful and it not only brought to light the inequalities in our medical system which I can't assume that's a shock to anyone but also in terms of the understanding of science and how the use of science and the care of science and how in terms of either being an ethical scientist or not being an ethical science but that came through art and I think there's a way that art is able to reach people for better or worse reach people in a way that other forms cannot and I actually think it's imperative to take art into into the conversation about science because my philosophy as I always share with Raquel is my concern with science is if scientists aren't telling the story other people will and we're noticing that that's what's happening when scientists have to have a rally to prove that science is real that's really problematic and I think that there's a way that scientists can no longer be seen as something that's there and then the rest of people are here and this is like skill workers and unskill workers I think that we can make that sort of connection that it is the discovery it is the interest it is the curiosity that brings about the what is science because all science started with a question what if we can what if this does what if blah blah blah what if there's a question that openness in the conversation and that's what art is my solo show that I wrote my first solo show that I wrote started off in the question of how can why do because Prince had just passed and I was like why do I love these artists who I don't know so it started from there and the terminating started from a question and I think science is the same exact same exact way and I think if we can get back to that heart and really encourage that the question right or wrong what comes out from it but just the question I think will engage people because people want to be engaged I think go ahead yeah so I think that's one of those things it's a very valid thing one of the work of the Alda Center has led to science communication as a thing scientists become science communicators which means they get training in communication right and they then go on to take positions that are about engagement, policy and so on researchers in the lab are interested in I'm interested in my research what's going to advance my question and so then it's how my does anybody else actually understand what I'm saying often what's true in a research department is nobody else understands what's coming out of that lab so they stand in a seminar room and they talk about their work to people who supposedly understand and nobody understands it the reason that systems biology program the communications they said we have brilliant students but you can't tell right and they couldn't and one of my favorite things that Mia asked a student it was just a question that you asked which was the student was up there doing a classic performance of yeah and so then and how's this and I'm like a classic scientist going oh he doesn't know his work he just doesn't know what he's talking about and Mia's like do you know your slide and he's like do you know what's on there and he was like yeah and I'm like no he didn't know but I was like why can't you ask that it's clear he doesn't know but it was just that question right so it's about supporting the performance is supporting communication being in community being in relation so all of my work is on developing people's ability to be in relation to others and in that context communicating their science to their colleagues to their advisors we're constantly asking them who do you need to talk to the only training we're doing is in the context of what they want to be being trained in so we're all we're only that's honestly I think we say that like five times no no it's not about us it's not about what we want for you it's what do you want what are you wanting to grow in because our work is demanding the work that you do as improvisers emotional work and sometimes we don't understand how demanding it is I think it's a shock anyway blah blah blah blah it's demanding and so we only go where they want to go well it's interesting all of us I think improv is the best tool that I've seen that's why I'm here how so um uh what at least when Nancy and I work with uh fellow scientists for me um we describe improv as a laboratory for human interaction right so it's a place to experiment with different ways of interacting with people in a safe space so yeah how do you get better at practicing compassion um part of that is empathy and understanding where other people are and what it's like to be other people in other people's shoes and improv lets you do that and lets you experience different situations in a well safe space brave space whatever you want but in a space where it's a lot less risky than the real world well again not a scientist but from my work with Raquel um and doing this kind of work and agreed the improv helps to create that environment um but I also think that part of creating sometimes what I've experienced in working with some scientists is that as opposed to an art an art you have to like my job is to if I'm doing a role I'm doing a shoot is that I have to always be observing people so there's most of many of you I can sit here and look at and probably have a good idea of some sense of you not everything but there's certain things that people do that you have to while you begin to sort of pick up and I think that what I've noticed with sometimes with scientists is there isn't you aren't required to take other people in you aren't required to relate to other people and so it is sort of you're invested in remaining in your own little silo in a way and what I've noticed in the work that we have done like one of my favorite um I always tell this story because he's one of my favorites um there was a young man who had a serious stuttering problem in one in our classes like he like a really serious stuttering problem and the when it came so how we do how we do the work is that every week different people are able to come up and get coaching and so he was his time to coaching and I remember talking to him beforehand and I said let's leave a little extra time for him so what I what I did is I had people surround him and I had him talk to each person individually and I said to them beforehand we are here for him can you be here for him if you can it's okay but we just can't you know we can't be in a circle but you know can you be here but and so and they were amazing they were amazing he didn't stutter once so I think that part of it again and I don't think there's anything miraculous about that I think that the reason is is because he was seeing and they were seeing him and I think that in this work to bring compassion to this work is the responsibility of stepping out of your own comfort zone who cares if you don't want to do so who cares if the point is that you need to communicate to another person that has to be the attention and objective it can't be about like oh my god if I'm going to feel comfortable if I'm going to do it then don't do it but if you're going to step you got to do the work then do the work and be uncomfortable that's one thing that I learned from Raquel be comfortable with being uncomfortable you'll survive you won't die it may be uncomfortable in the first couple of times it'll be really uncomfortable before you know it it gets easier and easier because people are just people you know I'm a queer woman and one of the things is I flirt with well I'm bisexual but you could flirt with men women gay men nobody cares because all flirting is being seen that's it thank you I think I wanted to add to that the focus of the work is building the ensemble and I think people sometimes and I actually had a conversation with another person it was like that's often left out it's a warm up to get to something else right it's like no actually that is the work the work is building the ensemble and they'll help direct where it needs to go and one of the things about the approach which I that so I'm trained in approach called social therapeutics I trained in order to help us grow emotionally because our worlds are messed up I'm not messed up right I don't think anybody we all have issues they all be crazy but I'm not broken our world is broken so how do we create a space where we can be with each other so that statement of being with each other vulnerable emotional intelligent is the ensemble right and that's the context in which Mia can give direction so we're constantly the first exercises that we're doing are paying attention to are we responding to each other are we together do we have that smile are we are we moving back and forth like we did we had we did one class where that ensemble didn't exist and it was quite hell quite hell hell hell hell hell do I say hell it was hell right where I learned like oh my god I never get to not be in the chair I mean the not be you know I always have to be here I always have to be here if I'm if I'm going to ask you to grow if I'm going to ask you to be uncomfortable I have to be here right and you can do that it doesn't always have to be this it's not everybody does my performance so this conference the cultivating ensembles instead of education research which I founded was chair I'm no longer the chair I was like somebody else has to do that and they're like oh my god we can't do what you do no you don't have to but we can learn how to be with each other and respond and create community in which scientists are learning how to do games to lead their classes in new ways to do research differently Pranit was at customer Sarah Elshafi is studying with Rebecca Stockley she's worked with Pixar and is teaching science communication using both you know video and different improv games and one of the things she said is I used to teach anatomy and I actually I took the customer method and I took it home and I used it in my classes and so before the class started and we did some games and then we would go through the class and then students started coming early and then they started coming late I mean staying late and then someone said you know what this is the best class ever and she was like said no one of anatomy class ever right but it was this whole new thing of what was it to build the ensemble in which people are seen and being able to see others and that's where the compassion is growing from we're sticklers on that another question thank you that's awesome love it, yes please so I would say they're across the board and I don't know just to staying in this space for the last five years because we've been doing this now since 2012 since 2012 but there's been a change that I actually relate to as part of the science communication publicity and public nature which is people have experienced improv and so they're doing an improv class and they don't have it in the context of what it means to have it in their work and so they're coming like oh I know what this is right like they're putting it into a box right every place of the game that duck comment didn't have to be an applied improv situation that may have been an improv class or someone who's like you know what I hate improv that didn't have to come from that context so people are coming with a sense of knowing what it is which can be in the way of no it is in a way thank you of the debriefs that go on where we're actually exploring the feelings that come in with it in relation to one another because it becomes oh did I get the game right oh I gotta get this right so I think that attention to relationality is so do people have a sense of what I mean when I say relation and relationality so it's so just this question just as concretely as I can when the question came I was gonna go hey well I got an answer leaving out that I'm actually and Carolyn on stage giving expression to that we're doing this together acting, working, speaking that we're together in a way that that gives expression to not by words that we're together I think at least that's how I see relationality I don't know what else so I was gonna say about that too it's a change point I feel like consciousness is moving in the right direction without the importance of our our no I would say that the work there was one class we worked with where they had already done improv in the beginning of the year and they were phenomenal they were so open so ready but I would say from my experience in terms of doing it as a person who's coming from an artistic background I'd still find it is still a challenge it is still a challenge to work with and do this work with because of that sense of knowing of wanting to be right and it so gets in the way of coming in and not I would say that one thing is like to again to bring about that compassion is to have an openness because I think a lot of time and also I think part of it as well is because me and Raquel two black women and we walk in and we're in that is so they always assume and especially when I get up there because I'm not a scientist that they're going to somehow be able to run me trust me they don't but they always assume they will and I think because this is assumption in terms of the knowing and the knowing and it really does impede and sometimes it makes it it makes it not pleasant honest I was thinking also the growth of the AIN community the visibility that is coming up the recognition that there's something relational something to learn about communication collaboration that is part of what's driving like people have recognition that they need to do something around how their teams are working that they want to address and that they don't know how to do so that's the part of the benefit like there's strength with it being me and I in the context we're talking about is professional presentation coaching right there's again there's a different work that goes into leadership capacity group dynamics overall career development it's all based on the relational work right so the games are only an activity to support us developing our ability to be in relation to one another please I have a sense of that does anybody else want to no do you have a response to that if it's in my classroom then I have them for at least a semester so the part of the ensemble is what people say and part of this is I'm in a location where I can hear continually hear feedback about what's going on right so part of that is oh they're talking to each other more they're a close-knit group so the first one off that I did was Boston University was this retreat right and I followed up with Caroline who's the director afterwards but it was mainly for billing but I was like oh I found out how come you heard about me it was because we're working over at Harvard and she's like oh what are you doing there she's like I know that like our kids came back everybody started asking for collaboration after they did that workshop everybody started asking for that and so we want to do more of that and so then it was just being able to say well as that others were doing that was possible so they don't have a language for what they're looking for so part of the work is again hearing the offer I'm looking for communication nobody knows what that means it's a buzzword it's jargon but you know you need it it's the most transferable skill but what is it right and we all mean it differently again which is why I think it's important so what does that mean oh oh you know what they're saying they need communication skills but they're actually trying to figure out how to work together as a team but their communications broken down oh okay they need communication skills they're you know people are leaving because there's not a culture for them to have support right like they're very so that's the the one off is how do you have the relationship with the person who's bringing you in to continue to find out what's needed and that's so that's that work I think of getting the client work is that relational work there there's back please far back the last yes yes yes yes so the question is about the relation and this will be our last question so we're going this yep it was trying to capture the question what's your experience of belonging um and the nuance of that yeah I mean I feel like it's so integral to radical inclusivity of cultivating ensembles um I kind of have a mixed feeling about the word belonging because it can if you belong then are there people that don't belong but in the context of like this it's it's um the sense of of being a part of something that everyone can be a part of and I feel like the yeah like the cultivating ensembles really helps with that and helps cultivate that that is part of being in an ensemble especially a radically inclusive ensemble and um yeah I've often felt out of place in a lot of places you know either as a theater person in physics or as a physics person in theater or as a collaborative learner in physics um so uh yeah it's been super helpful for me the environment for growth that Raquel and collaborators have the cultivating ensembles thank you um well some of I do feel like sometimes language is sometimes used as a way to um I feel like in some ways it sometimes uses a way to it's supposed to bring people together but can sometimes actually create a little more divisions and so what I mean by that is um because those are very like sort of app words right now you know otherness and those sort of you know that sort of language but then when you really ask it doesn't really mean anything I will say that just for me and so I guess the sense of belonging I mean I become so relative but I think when we are working together it is again never my concern whether I belong or not because the focus is on the students and the focus is on what they need in that moment and so um I think in the part of like creating if there is a way to create a sort of belonging it is in that way of trying to find where we are um similar in something or how again back to how someone is being seen and in terms of the work that we do we are like when I am working with a coaching someone during our sessions it is really focusing on like listening to who they are and getting a sense of what they want and I think when again when people are seen when people are heard there is a way that they respond and they are open and sometimes it can be a little shocking for them but I think that is what really allows um the in terms of the space that we have because everyone there is no such thing as when the person is up there being coached that you are sitting back and chilling like that is not the way it goes the audience is part of so in this scenario it is not that we are here on the stage and you are listening and taking in my brilliance so that is not what this is about a give and take and that we are responding and then you are responding back and that is all of us in this room together and so then you don't really have to get into that sort of conversation if it is just that sort of understanding that is why sometimes when artists say like you are a great audience they really do mean that that is not a joke they really do mean that because a great audience is just receiving what the person is giving and they are giving back and so if you don't have that that is not happening then that is when people feel isolated it is because they are thinking of themselves because they are worried and they are thinking you are judging me, you are judging me that is when isolation sets in when people are comfortable the reason that Michael Jackson will be comfortable on the stage yes he was super talented but also he didn't feel isolated he assumed you love me you love me you love me so that creates this thank you so my last comment as we leave we have to do one more thing okay so the part that I wanted to say still in relation to this is because the work I do is always focused on how do we create the context and the conditions in which we can be we are which is very different to see each other to be in relation to one another in a way that celebrates who we are and creates the conditions for us to grow that is all many times that is all I am doing I learned how to do that through the east side institute through the all stars through my family from organizing I think this I dub you all activists in the performance activist movement of bringing improvisation to the world in a way that people can grow and develop it is a creative process whatever recipe I can give you I will give you what I have you will have to make it your own thank you for coming thank you for coming thank you to all of you for your brilliant