iO's Charna Halpern featured in Wall Street Journal
Excerpt from: Two Protons Walk Into a Black Hole, And Other Jokes Physicists Tell
Scientists Considering Weighty Matters In Switzerland Need a Little Comic Relief
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
"Improv has got to be more difficult than doing physics. You have to think in milliseconds," said Bob Stanek, a particle physicist who is leading CERN's improv-comedy experiment. A short, wiry 59-year-old Chicago native with a white beard and round, gold-rimmed glasses, Mr. Stanek said he figured improv would help the physicists react quickly if something goes wrong. "When you're discussing things that go on here on a daily basis -- why your detector doesn't work, why your machine isn't collecting data -- you have to know how to respond in a quick manner," he said.
Mr. Stanek brought in Charna Halpern, an improv-comedy guru from Chicago whose roster of star students includes comedians Tina Fey, Mike Myers and Stephen Colbert. Since launching her Chicago theater in 1981, Ms. Halpern has trained executives and managers at companies such as BP and Abbott Laboratories. Ms. Halpern, 56, plans to return to CERN in October, when the physicists are scheduled to put on their first public performance. "The smarter you are, the better you are at this. That's why physicists will be funny," said Ms. Halpern, director of the iO theaters in Chicago and Los Angeles.
On their first day of improv class, the physicists sat in a cavernous auditorium where CERN's scientists normally gather for theory seminars. Equations from the previous day's lecture covered the 36-foot-wide blackboard.
As a warm-up exercise, Ms. Halpern and two actors from her theater had the physicists invent an imaginary product. In short order, they came up with something called "Wi and Dry" -- satin adult diapers equipped with a wireless Internet signal -- and composed a jingle that, unfortunately, is unprintable.
Later, Ms. Halpern said the real objective was to "brainwash students into agreeing with one another." Improvising requires seizing on other actors' ideas, even bad ones, she said.
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