Ingenious Responses

Jamie Simmonds and I have now co-written and performed three (3!) off-Broadway shows in the past two years, and today, two weeks after the official opening of our newest, Ingenious Nature, it’s our day off. This means no one gets to see me and Jamie perform today. Instead, you can watch the show’s official trailer on YouTube.

Yesterday we performed for a crowd of about 45 people, including Martin Daly, co-author of the Evolutionary Psychology classic Homicide, which inspired several sections of the show, as well as the song Survival of the Fittest from The Rap Guide to Evolution. This is one thing I absolutely love about my job: I will read a book that hugely impresses me, write a song to bring the book’s best ideas to a wider audience, and before long I find myself at Manhattan’s finest seafood restaurant with the book’s author and a group of new friends, discussing evolution, religion, philosophy, and the origins of human behaviour, until midnight over wine and oysters.

Martin Daly was only the latest of several inspiring academics to pass through the Soho Playhouse over the past few weeks, including Christopher Emdin and Gary Marcus, part of our “Human Nature Talkback Series” connecting the show’s audience with leading thinkers in science and education. Later this week (December 20) my guest on stage will be Jonathan Haidt, and on January 4th it will be Christopher Chabris, co-author of The Invisible Gorilla.

So the science community is loving the show, and the same seems to be true of the hip-hop community. On opening night we had Tonedeff and PackFM from QN5 (a couple of legendary underground rappers) sitting in the front row, and later today Jamie and I will be guests on their popular Tacos and Chocolate Milk Podcast. We’ve also had a steady stream of rappers, DJs, and singers from the Freestyle Mondays scene passing through the show (Shouts out to Milkmoney, Mariella, Rosa, Benny Els, Apple Juice, Grey Matter, Blitzkreig, Chaz Kangas, BS, Bobby Marino, Hired Gun, Rabbi Darkside, Skittelz, and Dyalekt).

Even though the science and hip-hop responses have been stronger than ever, the critical response has been a lot more mixed. My goal with this show was to popularize the findings of science by personalizing and dramatizing them through comedy, music, and character-driven theatre. The danger in this sort of endeavour is that the show might come across as “too scientific,” alienating people who aren’t aware of, or interested in, the science behind the story. For instance, the first review of the show to appear online, from Backstage.com, sported the unsubtle headline: “Ingenious Nature is Too Scientific”.

That was the first of several reviews that “just didn’t get it,” although the others appear to have more of a beef with hip-hop than with science. Both Lighting and Sound America and CurtainUp.com decided to fault me by faulting rap, the former by declaring that “rap, by its very nature, consists of torrents of words that don’t allow for much emotional variety” and the latter by going after the “hokey” hip-hop trope of “using demonstrative hand symbols to illustrate lyrics.” It’s interesting that this kind of “genre-bashing” critical response was entirely absent from both of the previous two rap/theatre hybrid shows we did off-Broadway.

Still, most of the reviews have been primarily or entirely positive. Theater Mania calls the show “brilliant and bizarre” while the New Yorker says it “feels like a mash-up of ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ and ‘Sex and the City’ as performed by a young Eminem,” an experience that (in typically aloof New Yorker parlance) is “not without charm.” The Associated Press calls it “a unique theatrical experience” and Exeunt Magazine gives it four stars and calls it “winkingly funny,” all-in-all a (partial) critical triumph!

So there’s the science, hip-hop, and critical responses, now what about the all-important popular response? That’s been the most topsy-turvy of all. On opening night we had a hundred people in the crowd, which was awesome, but on the night after opening we had only five (5!) people in the house, which is heavy lifting for a show as high-energy as this one. We performed for five that night, but the following Thursday we only had three, and instead of powering through that show I just talked to them and asked them to come another night when there’s a crowd, which means we actually cancelled a show due to low sales. The shame!

Actually those days were outliers, and almost every other night the audience has at least been over twenty, but in a 200-seater that still feels quiet. So I’m in the odd position of having a fun, smart, critically-mostly-acclaimed show off-Broadway that is not filling up. What to do? One ray of hope is that the mighty New York Times has already been in to see the show, a week ago, but they haven’t published their review yet. As I learned in 2010, a kick-ass NY Times review can sell out a show in a matter of hours, so every morning I check the Arts section with baited breath, and will continue to do so until it appears, like Tom Hanks in Castaway scanning the horizon for a ship.

Another ray of hope is all of y’all. We continue for exactly three more weeks, closing on January 6th, so if you live in New York, buy yourself some tickets. Or, if you don’t, buy your friend who lives in New York some tickets. And if you want to organize a large group to come, I can connect you with the box office manager for a group discount. As the many people who have seen the show so far could attest, it’s a blast and will provoke thought and perhaps a little outrage, and leave you with a whole array of new conversation-starters. I’ve also been running an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit.com which includes a link to discount tickets if you participate. So ask me anything!