Guest – Rising Ape Collective

This month, we are beyond excited to be hosting The Free Radicals and the Bristol premiere of their improvised science comedy show, Schrödinger’s Hat. Ahead of the double bill at The Room Above theatre, we sat down with the group’s cartoon mascot, Bradley, to get the scoop on the show.

Hello new cartoon friend. Who are you and what are The Free Radicals all about?

Hi there, I’m Bradley Radical, the friendly face of The Free Radicals, an improv troupe based in Reading.

The Free Radicals formed out of a group of improvisers who attend the “What’s The Game” drop-in improv classes. The venue for the classes also hosted the local chapter of the British Science Association (BSA) and we learned they were looking for science-inspired events for British Science Week 2017.

Dave, founder of the troupe, pitched an idea to the BSA: an improv show based on a talk from a local researcher. They loved it. So, a team of willing improvisers was assembled from the class and we performed the show Schrödinger’s Hat for the first time in March 2017.

Feedback from the first audience, speaker and players was positive and we’ve been going ever since.

‘Schrödinger’s Hat’, great improv pun title. What motivated you to make this kind of show?

The term “alternative facts” had recently been coined around the time we started and was being used a lot to disparage evidence-based journalism. Dave’s background is in software engineering and he was keen to showcase legitimate science and technology research in a way that would be accessible to wider audiences. Bringing in a guest speaker to provide a short talk for the improvisers to riff off of seemed like a great way of achieving this goal.

The “Schrödinger’s Hat” of the title came about as we tell the audience that the physicist Schrödinger would often lecture whilst talking through his hat. This meant that what they heard was simultaneously true and false- a joke that chimes well with the themes of ‘alternative facts’.

What do the speakers think about your performances based off their research?

When we first started, we were concerned that we might accidentally cross a line and upset our speakers. However, we have had a unanimously positive response. We and the speakers see two main upsides to how we treat their research.

First, our audiences tell us they understand and remember a lot more about the talks than they were expecting. We think that, because they know we are creating sketches and stories around the research, the audience listen carefully to the speaker so they can spot the callbacks and references during the improv. In addition, the memory of a sketch or scene helps to reinforce some of the facts from the talk and even help to make sense of the science.

Second, our speakers love the way we play around with their talk. We are careful to respect the speaker and their science so it’s always done in a good-natured style.

How are you feeling about doing the show in Bristol?

We’re very excited. Notwithstanding that this is our first time performing outside of Reading, Bristol has particular significance for The Free Radicals.

Bristol is home to the Bristol Improv Theatre, plus loads of brilliant local troupes, and we recognise that there is a mature and discerning audience for improv. We are looking forward to seeing the reaction we get from the local community.

But Bristol also has a really strong science communication community, too. We feel that we are, in some small way, doing our bit for the public understanding of science. Finally, we are excited to be playing alongside Rising Ape Collective who have a foot in both scicomm and theatre like us.

Pretend I’m someone who absolutely hates science. Convince me to come to your show anyway.

The Free Radicals are drawn from the world of theatre, as well as STEM (science, tech, engineering and maths), so you can be confident you’re going to see a show that you’ll find funny at the very least. Our style is a mix of short games and long-form improv that can be both daft and clever.

When you add in the talk, you’ll also get to learn something you probably didn’t know before, so we hope the experience opens your mind. And at just £7 for two full shows it’ll be worth opening your wallets too!

I’m sold! Thanks Bradley, we’ll see you at the show.

The Free Radicals perform Schrödinger’s Hat as part of a double bill with Rising Ape’s Publish or Perish on Saturday 22 February at The Room Above. Book your tickets now

This drawing, of a man contained within a circle and a square, is one of the most recognizable in the world. It seems to fascinate people and has a way of transcending time and space to connect with its viewers. It also is really easy to parody.

The original document, pictured above and created by Leonardo Da Vinci, has two major components: the drawing itself, and two paragraphs of writing. Both deserve some attention, because while this image is rather commonplace in our culture, most people don’t realize how many layers there are.

Vitruvius

First off, why is the drawing even called the “Vitruvian Man”? Is Vitruvius a place or something?

That was my first thought, but it turns out that Vitruvius was a man. Vesuvius = volcano, Vitruvius = man.

Vitruvius was a roman architect whose ten-part treatise on architecture, De architecura, was the only document about architecture to survive from antiquity. This means we owe much of our knowledge of the theory behind Roman aqueducts, central heating, and water pumps to this book. It is also the source of the (possibly apocryphal) story of Archimedes, his discovery in a bathtub, and his shout of “Eureka!”.

Vitruvius held that the three basic elements of good architectural design were strength, functionality, and beauty. These elements are so important that they remain mainstays of modern architectural theory. He was also especially interested in proportion. He believed that ‘beautiful’ proportions were those based on nature. And what more perfect example of nature was there than Man?

He believed that a perfect male body would fit the following conditions and that these proportions could be used to design perfect buildings.

For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centred at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom.

And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.

-Vitruvius’ De architectura

And then his writings were lost for more than a thousand years.

They were re-discovered in the 1400s in Italy and gained traction amongst Renaissance artists.

The drawing

And which Renaissance artist should be more intrigued by the challenge of drawing Vitruvius’ man than Leonardo Da Vinci, the namesake of everyone’s second favourite Ninja Turtle?

It's ok Leonardo, you may be my second favourite Ninja Turtle, but you'll always be my favourite Renaissance painter. — It’s ok Leonardo, you may be my second favourite Ninja Turtle, but you’ll always be my favourite Renaissance painter.

Da Vinci realized that in order for Vitruvius’ description to work, the centre of the square needed to be lower than the navel. This lateral thinking separated Leonardo from other artists whose attempts to keep the same centre for both shapes made their men look strange.

The other thing that separates Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is the dual positioning. It gives a sense of movement to the piece as if it is an early kind of animation. One unfortunate consequence of this is that the drawing doesn’t render very well in 3D and looks kind of like an alien:

An alien through the trees! Image by Matt Brown

The writing

The drawing itself certainly draws a lot of attention, but few take the time to look at the writing. This is partially because it is in illegible script, and the script is triply illegible to me. First of all, I’m just bad at reading old, faded cursive script. Second, it’s in Italian and I don’t understand Italian. Third, and most interestingly in my opinion, it’s written in mirror writing. Why he did this is unknown, but it might have helped him avoid smudging as he wrote with his left hand.

The content of the paragraphs describe all of the proportions present in the drawing. For Da Vinci (and Vitruvius), the distance between the tip of the fingers and the elbow is called one cubit and it is exactly six times the width of a palm and one quarter the height of a person.

There are 15 such proportions below that I encourage you to try out. How do you measure up to the Vitruvian Man?

the length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man
from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of the height of a man
from below the chin to the top of the head is one-eighth of the height of a man
from above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man
from above the chest to the hairline is one-seventh of the height of a man.
the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of the height of a man.
from the breasts to the top of the head is a quarter of the height of a man.
the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is a quarter of the height of a man.
the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of the height of a man.
the length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man.
the root of the penis is at half the height of a man.
the foot is one-seventh of the height of a man.
from below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the height of a man.
from below the knee to the root of the penis is a quarter of the height of a man.
the distances from below the chin to the nose and the eyebrows and the hairline are equal to the ears and to one-third of the face.

To learn more about this topic, watch this BBC documentary (part 1, part 2) on the subject that inspired this post.

Category: Guest

3 minutes with Bradley from The Free Radicals