Darwin on the Fringe
July 30 2009
Baba Brinkmans Darwin
on the Fringe blog presents an insiders view of Edinburgh through the lens of
Memetics, Evolutionary Psychology, and other Darwinian paradigms.
A meme (cousin of the gene)
is a piece of information that is stored in neurons (or their media proxies),
and copied from mind to mind via human communication. A phrase can be a meme, or a word, or a song, or a slogan,
or a dance, or a picture, or a story, or any cultural artifact that is spread
from person to person with some accuracy. In other words, the coveted Fringe buzz follows the shows with the best
meme-pool (memorable and catchy material) and the best memetic engineers
(publicists).
The other Darwinian theory
that can help shed light on the Fringe is Evolutionary Psychology (EP), which
attempts to explain human behaviour in terms of mental adaptations that helped
us to survive and reproduce in our ancestral environments. For instance, if you are standing at
the base of Arthurs Seat, you will estimate its height as considerably less
than you would if you were standing on top of it. Why? Because
people in the past who over-estimated heights they might fall from tended to
leave more descendents than people who under-estimated heights they might fall
from, hence, all people have this cognitive bias. EP can also help to explain why sex and violence are such
universally fascinating subjects in art, because of their direct relevance to
reproduction and survival. So the
elusive Fringe buzz also follows the shows that best trigger our evolved
emotional responses: laughter, elation, wonder, tears, indignation, moral
outrage, etc.
At this point, a week before
the Fringe, its still anyones game, but between now and September we will all
witness a harrowing form of Darwinian selection, as the fittest shows thrive
and prosper in the Fringes hostile and competitive environment, while the
least fit are reduced to daily 2 for 1 ticket offers, one-star reviews, and the
inevitable empty-houses, doomed to go the way of Jihad the Musical. In
honour of Charles Darwins 200th birthday, let the games begin!
The Secret Life of Sperm,
and Fringe Promotion
August 2 2009
The front page of todays
Independent on Sunday features a fascinating headline: The Secret Life of
Sperm, concerning a recent discovery about the structure of human (and mouse)
sperm cells. Unlike the egg, which
contains most of the functioning parts of the cell, sperm have only
tightly-packed coils of DNA in their head and a powerful molecular motor in
their flagella or tail, but no cytoplasm, nucleus, mitochondria, etc. It has long been thought that sperm
cells simply wiggle their way along until they meet the egg, and the first one
to squirm its way inside is the winner, delivering its genetic package for the
egg to use in the cell division that creates the fetus.
But no, theres a
tantalizing twist! It turns out
that sperm cells have small loops of DNA left uncoiled and exposed to the
elements on the outside of their heads, and that these loops serve as a key
that signals their fitness or compatibility to the eggs, which then decide
whether to allow entry or not! It
is apparently the rejection of this molecular key by sensibly discriminating
eggs that causes the high proportion of male infertility cases (about
two-thirds) that cant be explained by obvious causes such as low sperm
count. Evolutionary psychologists
often assume that the last line of defense in female mate choice is a womans
mind, or her legs, but now it turns out there is a final gatekeeper. Her lips and her hormones may say yes,
but her eggs are saying: Wait, what kind of immune system will the child have? You can read the article here.
What does this have to do
with the Edinburgh Fringe, you ask?
Well, we only just arrived here this morning and spent the day doing our
tech rehearsal, and already the proliferation of flyers and posters around the
city is striking. Just like the
loop of exposed DNA on the tip of a sperm cells head, a Fringe poster or flyer
offers a select sample of the images, attitudes, and ideas that the show has to
offer, a sample of its key memes.
And just like those loops, flyers and posters are designed for one
purpose: to get past your sensible conservative defenses and form a union with
what lies beyond. Flyers are the
keys to the fertile minds of Fringe punters, and over the next few weeks they
will bombard us all with equal fervor, undiscriminating and relentless.
Of course, this analogy
proceeds directly from the common underlying economic realities. Hundreds of millions of sperm cells
will compete with each other to reach the egg in each (coital) ejaculation, and
each egg may be subjected to sperm competition from multiple males (depending
on the woman in question), and out of all of those competing genetic packets,
only one has any hope of combining with each egg. No wonder the eggs have evolved extra safeguards against the
plundering of their precious resources.
Likewise, there are approximately 2000 shows on the Fringe competing for
attention from punters this year, and the vast majority of the tickets will go unsold, just like
every other year. Ironically, one
of the main Arts features in
todays Independent on Sunday was about the effect of the recession on Fringe
ticket sales (click here to read it), projected to cause an epidemic of creative infertility. I must say, however, that the promo
material for both the Rebel Cell and the Rap Guide to Evolution is quite
striking. See for yourself, and
consider whether these memetic keys would penetrate your defenses.
Lekking at the Fringe
August 7 2009
Capercallie Lekking
Tonight Dizraeli and I
performed our first of many after-hours cabaret shows, the staple of
Edinburgh. We were part of Crme
de la Underbelly at the Cow Caf, the last of about a dozen other comedy and
music acts, each strutting our stuff for ten minutes in front of a rowdy crowd
of about a hundred non-paying audience members. Non-paying?
Yes, the beauty (and horror) of the Fringe is that everyone who has a show
will happily take any free after-hours cabaret gig offered, since there are so
many shows on and it is simply the best way to draw a crowd. The venues offer free cabaret showcases
every night, most of it quite excellent entertainment, and many audience
members are savvy enough to not waste their time and money going to a show
unless theyve at least seen a ten minute excerpt as a sample of its quality.
Tonight was saw the
inestimably witty poet Luke Wright, a brilliant musical cabaret duo called
Frisky and Mannish, who reinterpreted pop songs in totally unexpected and
hilarious ways, and a very funny sketch comedy combo called Shirley and
Shirley. The absolutely highlight,
however, was the stand-up comic Gerry Howell, who had us all gasping for breath
with his deadpan stream of consciousness humor. Unlike almost everything at the Fringe, I would actually pay
to see him (but keep in mind that I have venue passes which means free entry to
hundreds of shows). Tragically,
Gerry is on at the same time as the Rebel Cell, so I wont get a chance, but it
was a pleasure to watch him lek.
What is a lek? In evolutionary biology, its a term
for a group of male animals that gather in one location (or area) to engage in
competitive mating displays. Many
birds and fish engage in this practice, and it has apparently evolved to
accommodate both the female preference for quality and the male preference for
quantity at the same time. Males
show off their sexually-selected feathers or songs or nest-building skills, and
females appraise the fitness of each of the competitors and decide which one
(or ones) to mate with, leaving some alpha males with the lions share of the
chicks, and some with none at all.
So whats in it for the unlucky males? Well, failure to display absolutely guarantees failure to
mate, whereas even unfit males have a chance if they shake their tail-feathers,
however ineptly, since their fortunes will rise and fall with the number and
quality of their competitors.
Also, some birds have evolved to lek nearby their brothers or closely
related kin, so that even if they are unsuccessful they might attract females
for the benefit of other males who share copies of their genes.
Sage Grouse Lek
Note that the parallel here
is between females and audience members vs males and performers, and once again
it is based on economic facts rather than gender politics. The acts tonight included both males
and females, but even the female performers were lekking, and they were doing
so for both male and female audience members. Even the designation female in the natural world simply
means the gender with the largest sex cells (usually the egg), and it
correlates strongly with parental investment of resources. Here at the Fringe, the audience
members carefully protect their investment of time and money, since they can
only afford to see so many shows, whereas performers will indiscriminately mate
with anyone willing (or potentially willing) to buy a ticket, the more the
better. And how did Mud Sun fare
in our lekking dance tonight? The
audience was loving it, I can say that much, dancing and cheering their hearts
out. But the Rebel Cell opens
tomorrow afternoon, and thats when well see whether they were just flirting
or really ready for fertilization.
Mud Sun Lekking
Creative Menopause
August 11 2009
Adam (Artist's Rendition)
This is the first year Ive
been on the Fringe strictly as a performer and not a producer, and I am lovin
it! In all four of my previous
Edinburgh runs the intricacies of technical schemes, lighting, publicity, press
tickets, scheduling, flyering, etc, all went through me. This year both the Rebel Cell and the
Rap Guide to Evolution are produced entirely by SPL Productions, a talented and
fun-loving bunch of guys who all know each other from college and collaborate
on theatre projects. The head
honcho, Adam, coordinates everything with ramshackle virtuosity, and the upshot
is that the shows are far more professional, the exposure and sales have been
much higher, and I get to focus on performing and experiencing the Fringe
rather than juggling miscellanea. But every now and then Adam surprises me with
something like: Yeah, on the fringe back in 1998 when I was acting in this
play or Yeah, when I directed that production What Im coming to realize
is that for Adam, as for many producers, the transition from performing to
administration amounts to a form of creative menopause.
Menopause is a strange
phenomenon, unique to humans in the natural world. Whereas other female primates and animals of all types
reproduce until the end of their lives, or until aging makes it physically
impossible, for some reason human females have evolved to hormonally terminate
their reproductive capacities long before the end of their healthy lives, which
cries out for an explanation. The
most popular and best-supported theory is the Grandmother Hypothesis which
holds that women who forgo reproduction past a certain age actually contribute
more to their genetic legacy by assisting in the care and education of their
grandchildren, children, nephews, and nieces, rather than competing with them
for mates. This explains why both
of my grandmothers and all of my aunts seem to get such evident pleasure out of
watching me overeat. The theory
was also recently confirmed by a study which found that children in Africa were
ten times less likely to survive if their mothers died before their second
birthday, but that those same children saw their chances double if their
maternal grandmother was still alive, although no other relative had any
measurable effect. Click here
to read about the study.
In the Rap Guide to
Evolution I joke that the only groupies I attract with my Chaucer and Darwin
rap shows are highly educated post-menopausal women. The gag is funny because its (disproportionately) true, and
also because it perfectly illustrates the driving force behind sexual
selection. Presumably any mutation
in the past that made a male exclusively attractive to post-menopausal (or
pre-pubescent) females would have been swiftly eliminated from the gene
pool. Or at least thats what I
thought, but yesterday an elderly woman who was manifestly tickled with the
show wrote in my comment book: I have a daughter! Maybe its useful to be attractive to PMW! This is a brilliant hypothesis I had
never considered before, not as an explanation for the evolution of menopause,
but as a plausible way that sexually selected traits exclusively attractive to
post-menopausal women could still be seen as reproductively beneficial
adaptations, if the attraction facilitates introductions to nubile young
females (hope springs eternal).
Today a different elderly woman took offense at the joke and wrote in my
comment book that she found it sexist and anti-ageist [sic]", but when I
showed her the first womans comment from the day before she had a good laugh
and seemed less indignant.
And in the model of
male/performer vs female/audience (see my entry on lekking), thats exactly
Adams function as a creatively post-menopausal theatre producer, orchestrating
memetic couplings rather than participating in the coital performances first
hand (although he has been ably filling in for both the lighting tech and
director over the past few days).
Saying someone is creatively post-menopausal doesnt mean they arent
creative, only that most of the memes they generate are spread through
intermediaries (such as myself and Dizraeli), just like the genes of
grandmothers. Of course, in Adams
case it is a professional choice he made, whereas all women undergo menopause
whether they want to or not, but the hormonal change that besets middle-aged
women also represents a choice made by natural selection during the course of
human evolution. The reproductive
benefits (via descendents) must have outweighed the costs, or else it wouldnt
have evolved. Likewise, Adams
cost/benefit analysis of his options must have favored producing on balance
over performing, or else he would have made a different choice. This is how the mind constantly
recreates a sped-up version of the evolutionary process, generating and
selecting among scenarios and courses of action. And I must say that in light of where I am right now, I feel
grateful for the blessings of both Adams and my two grandmothers
post-menopausal nurturing.
Fickle Fans
August 16 2009
Ten days into the Fringe and
one thing is certain, its a bumper year.
Ticket sales are up, the streets are mobbed, and shows are selling out
left right and centre. So far the
Rap Guide to Evolution and the Rebel Cell have not been selling out but they
are both getting strong daily audiences in the 80-100 range and gaining
steam. Where have all the extra
people come from? I was puzzled,
until a friend and perennial Edinburgh resident pointed out that many of the
locals who usually go on holiday overseas were probably forced to stay home
because of the recession, so they are going to Fringe shows instead. Lucky us.
And is there any logic behind the success of some shows over others? Word of mouth and media coverage obviously play prominent roles, but in cultural evolution as in the natural world a chance collision of environmental factors can redirect the flow of genes/memes in unexpected ways. One recent study of Goby fish revealed that female preferences change year to year in response to multiple factors, from environmental signals to herd mentality, causing sexual selection to favour different kinds of males in different years. This constant fluctuation in the definition of sexy helps to maintain variety in the gene pool. Click here to read about the study.
Variety and herd mentality
are certainly here at the Fringe in spades. The Goby fish study notes that in some bird species females
have been observed to copy the sexual preferences of more dominant females. Fringe audiences can be seen exhibiting
this behaviour as well, in the form of celebrity endorsements. Instead of posters or reviews, one
company is putting up printouts of a Twitter feed that reads Went to see a
really great show today, details etc, signed Rhys Darby, Flight of the
Conchords. But Dizraeli and I are
not above this kind of behaviour either.
For the past few days weve been featuring on the Early Edition with BBC
regulars Marcus Brigstock and Andre Vincent, rapping the news to conclude their
comedy review, and basking of the warm glow of positive association. Of course, the ultimate celebrity
endorsement still eludes me. How
can I get Richard Dawkins to come see the Rap Guide to Evolution? He's going to be here at the end of the month for the book fetival and I think a rapturous overture is in order. Any ideas?
Genres and Cladistics
August 20 2009
Tonight Dizraeli and I
performed as part of a spoken word and storytelling showcase at the Cow Caf,
which means the audience was treated to excerpts of both theatre and comedy
shows. Whether a given act was
classified as theatre or comedy was entirely at the whim of its producer
several months ago, when the Fringe registration process was completed, and it
was primarily a marketing decision.
For instance, tonights show featured Rachel Rose Reid, Theatre, Luke
Wright, Comedy, and Dizraeli and I from the Rebel Cell, Theatre, all performing
spoken word and/or storytelling.
This was the same debate we
had about the Rap Guide to Evolution, should we list it as Comedy or
Theatre? The Fringe doesnt have a
Spoken Word category, much less a Rap category (and rightly so, as it would
definitely be a ticket sales killer), so the decision was really a question of
managing expectations rather than accuracy of any kind.
All of this nebulous genre
blending makes me yearn for the clarity of cladistics, and makes me wonder
whether there will ever be any way to classify culture with as much clarity and
objectivity. If youre new to
evolutionary biology, cladistics is the study of family trees, classifying
organisms in groups or clades based on their shared ancestry. For instance, humans, chimps, bonobos, organgutans,
and gorillas (and other extinct species) share a single clade known as Hominidae that branched off from other apes several
million years ago, since these species all share a common ancestor that is not a
common ancestor of gibbons or other primates, mammals, etc. To find those common ancestors youd
have to go back further in time (the subject of Dawkins book The Ancestors
Tale). The beauty of cladistics is
that it represents a system of classification that is based on real, verifiable
speciation events, rather than just subjective lists of qualities. CDs in your music collection could be
organized by style, or year of release, or alphabetically, or any system that
works for you, no system more correct than any other. Cladistics, on the other hand, is more
like solving a puzzle with a single empirically true answer. The wikipedia entry is very
informative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics
In other news, the Rebel
Cell was nominated for two Musical Theatre Matters Awards, both in the Best
Production and Judges Discretionary Award categories, which means someone
on the judging panel decided that a show done entirely in rap qualifies as
musical theatre along with Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. Obviously if rap is a genre of music
then the Rebel Cell must qualify as musical theatre, but Ive heard rumors that
this inclusion is controversial among the judges and musical theatre people
here at the Fringe. Certainly the
idea of Dizraeli and I getting an award for busting rhymes must rankle the
aspiring Broadway stars who have to worry about things like tuning. If only there were a cladistics of
theatre we could avoid all of this animosity. Click here to learn more about the Musical Theatre Matters
Awards, and wish us luck!
Fortuitous Speciation
August 21 2009
As an addendum to my
previous entry about Genres and Cladistics, today my show The Rap Guide to
Evolution was given a Fringe First Award from the Scotsman, and the first thing
that entered my mind was: if we had listed the show as Comedy, this would never
have happened. The Fringe First
Awards are for the best new stage writing at the Fringe, and they only cover
theatre genres, childrens shows and musicals, but not comedy. Of course, if I had listed as comedy I
would have been eligible for the IF Comedy Award (or whatever its called this
year), but I have no delusions; my show isnt that funny.
The performance would have been exactly the same, but some Scotsman
critic would have been thinking, I quite enjoyed that, shame it wasnt a
theatre show.
I suddenly imagined myself as a mammalian
ancestor shortly after the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and
caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction, dinosaurs with whom I shared a
distant common progenitor, but from whose destiny I would now irrevocably
diverge. I imagined myself
surrounded by emaciated carcasses, the bodies of beasts who had been my most
fearsome predators just a few years before, thinking yeah, well whos
scavenging now?!?
Concealed Ovulation and the
Open Mind
August 25 2009
Twice in the past few days Ive
been approached by an audience member after the show and told Hey, you wont
remember me, but I came to see your Rap Canterbury Tales in 2004, and it
inspired me to start writing and performing spoken word poetry. Both of these young people are regular
performers competing in slams and getting known here in the UK, spreading memes
of their own to new crowds. Now,
the pride I felt in learning this fact is of a different sort than the pride of
a teacher watching a student excel in their field after years of patient
knowledge-transfer. The
teacher/student pride is more like that of a parent for his child, whereas the
pride I felt was more like that of a man who learns that a one night stand he
had years ago had unexpectedly produced a healthy and thriving offspring
(thanks to the nurturing efforts of others).
The next day performing the
Rap Guide to Evolution I couldnt help but scan the crowd and wonder whether
any seeds were being sown there as well.
Would the song titles and choruses be repeated around dinner
tables? Would any of them decide
to take up the pen and explore performance poetry, or take up the pipette and
explore the biosciences, or finally read Darwins Origin of Species? Theres
no way of knowing whether any seeds are being sown until much later. If performance is memetic copulation,
then audiences definitely conceal their ovulation.
Among primate species, some
females have very prominent genital swellings and pheromones that signal their
receptivity, whereas others have evolved to specifically conceal their estrus
phase both from males and from themselves. The route to concealed ovulation and its relevance to
monogamy has been a subject of much debate among evolutionary biologists, but
Jared Diamonds Sex and the Female Agenda article in Discover Magazine provides
a useful overview. Suffice to say,
concealed ovulation can be associated both with monogamy (inducing males to
copulate continuously rather than strategically) and also with promiscuity
(mating with multiple males confuses paternity and solicits parental
benevolence from all of them).
Diamonds theory is that concealed ovulation evolves for the latter
reason first, and is then adapted as an impetus to monogamy second, once male
parental investment becomes a significant factor in the survival of offspring.
In the case of audiences
concealing their receptivity from performers the incentive system is definitely
aligned with the promiscuity model.
Your audience picks you, you dont pick your audience, and once theyve
picked you the impetus is on you to please as many of them as you can, as much
as possible. Audiences that
advertise their openness too readily will eventually end up with lazy and
complacent performers, which in turn leads to a loss of audience and new
opportunities for upstart performers (a cycle that drives the entire
entertainment industry). But of
course, even in the case of human concealed ovulation, there are subtle signals
being sent, much like the smiles and laughter and applause that audiences use
to signal their increasing receptivity to mental fertilization. In one recent study of lap-dancers in
the USA, researchers found that the dancers average tips fluctuated in sync
with their ovulation cycle, but only if they werent on the pill. Neither the men nor the dancers
necessarily knew when the ovulation occurred, but there was a subtle form of
communication transpiring nonetheless, with tangible economic results. So is there a pill for closing your mind
that parallels the pill for closing your womb? Thats one for another study.
Death of a Mayfly
September 2 2009
The Fringe is dead, long
live the Fringe. This morning we
packed out of our student flat in central Edinburgh and caught the train back
to London, and tomorrow I fly back to Vancouver (not for a rest though, Im
going straight to Burning Man!)
Yesterday was day 25 of the Rebel Cell and day 27 of the Rap Guide to
Evolution and I have to admit I am exhausted. The exhaustion isnt so much from the shows though, its
from the action-packed last few days of the Fringe, going to see as many comedy
acts as we could (highlights: Pajama Men and Celia Pacquola) followed by some
late nights out. I took the leash
off a bit at the end because I had been extremely moderate for the middle ten
days of the Festival due to serious vocal strain. No shows were cancelled, but some of my audiences were
treated to husky performances a la Tom Waits, which means I probably lost the favour
of many an ovulating female (no, I didnt sound as good as Tom Waits, just similarly
graveled).
Research has shown a strong
preference for deeper male voices among women during their fertility phase, but
only for short term mating purposes, not committed relationships. Research has also shown that men
consistently find womens voices more attractive during ovulation (but only if
they are not on the pill), another form of subtle signaling designed by
evolution to maximize reproductive potential (see my previous entry on
concealed ovulation). And how did
my whispery voice affect my daily memetic copulation with audience
members? Well, only in a parallel
universe could we do a controlled experiment, but the final weekend drew my
biggest crowds yet, and over the course of the Festival we sold approximately
1800 tickets to the Rap Guide to Evolution, higher than any previous Fringe run
Ive been part of. Special thanks
are due to the Scotsman for their acknowledgement, which certainly increased my
memetic proliferation.
Yes, it really has been
orgiastic, and at this festival I have repeatedly played the role of both
female/audience and male/performer, spreading memes of my own and receiving the
memes of others, which will now gestate until I deliver them forth in some new
form. The best analogy in the natural
world that I can find for the Edinburgh Fringe phenomenon is the life cycle of
the mayfly. Mayflies belong to the
order Ephemeroptera, Greek for short-lived
wings, also an apt description of the ephemeral Fringe experience. Mayflies live most of their lives as
aquatic naiads or nymphs (wingless crawling insects), living and feeding
underwater for a year or two before they moult and metamorphose into their
sexually mature flying adult form.
The purpose of the adult mayfly is singular: to mate and mate fast. They only live for a few hours or a day
at the most, and just to make sure they arent distracted by frivolities such
as foraging, their mouths are non-functioning and their digestive tracts are
filled with air. Evolution really
has fashioned adult mayflies literally as sex machines. When tens of thousands of mayflies all
emerge from the water at once, these clouds of frenzied mating flies can darken
the sky and cover every surface.
We used to encounter swarms of them on the block during my treeplanting
days – we called them fuck bugs.
Thats what the Fringe feels
like. Imagine emerging from the
cold lake after spending a year crawling around underwater just feeding and
shedding your skin and feeding and shedding your skin, developing the resources
you will need for the swarm. Then
suddenly you are air-born and time is moving faster than youve ever
experienced and you know death is imminent and you are surrounded by thousands
or tens of thousands of others in the exact same predicament, all with the same
biological imperative screaming: mate, mate, mate! The mating in the case of the Fringe is (primarily) memetic,
exchanging ideas and songs and stories rather than genes, but that feeling of
fleeting frenzy is the same. You
do what you can with the short time you have, and when it finishes you accept
its passing. Of course, death in
this analogy is not death, just as sex is not sex. Death is simply the cessation of joyful daily opportunities
to spread your memes. From a genes
eye view, the body of the adult mayfly might be breathing its last exhausted
breath, but sperm have been deposited, eggs have been laid, and the purpose of
these spent ephemeral bodies has been served. The genes (or at least copies of them) will emerge in new bodies
next year for another swarm.
Whether I will be one of
those bodies at next years Fringe remains to be seen, but for now Im feeling
somewhat embryonic, ready for some sleep in the fetal position (ie, on a
cramped airplane). If I understood
the evo devo of memetics a bit better I could try to predict the form that
these gestating memes might take in a years time, but for now Im happy to
just let them steep, comforted by the knowledge that my mind has been well
fertilized over the past month, and that my memes were received by several
thousand other fertile minds. Buzz
buzz buzz.
