Research is all around us, whether it’s bubbling away in the labs, or out in the world changing the way we live and think. These days, it’s also on the bill of your evening’s entertainment. John Hill talks to some of the smart people bringing their work to the stage as part of the Bright Club variety night.
DOCTOR Mags Pullen is doing some extremely intriguing stuff as part of her day job with Durham University. But it’s not always easy to find someone outside of campus who’s itching to hear about it.
“My husband is a musician, and he often shuts his eyes when I talk about my work”, she says.
“But there’s always a way for each of us to relate what we’re interested in. Everything has a story, but maybe sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper.”
Dr Pullen is a post-doctoral research associate at Durham’s Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. Her work involves investigating the signal relays that enable plants to react to stresses such as a cold snap or bug attack.
While the team’s study could eventually be invaluable in breeding new, more resistant strains of plant for food, it’s not necessarily the sort of thing that makes good cabaret.
Actually, stop there. It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes good cabaret. But, like all the best routines, it’s all about how you tell ‘em.
Pullen is one of the participants in Newcastle’s second Bright Club, an event which encourages researchers, academics and students to present their work on a different type of stage. The event transforms people’s academic passions into a entertaining talk or routine, giving the audience a taste of what makes it exciting without mocking it for cheap laughs.
It was cooked up at University College London by Miriam Miller and former Centre for Life employee Steve Cross, and the first event hit the stage in May 2009.
It has since been held in locations such as Brighton, Manchester and Edinburgh, and popped up at Newcastle’s Bridge Hotel in July.
The Newcastle offshoot is funded by Beacon North East, and run in association with the Centre for Life. The second of three events will take place at the Black Swan on Westgate Road next Thursday, and interest is so high that it’s already sold out. Another is being pencilled in for November.
The academic line-up has been nudged toward the bright lights by Helen Keen, whose own space-themed Edinburgh Festival stand-up show has been transformed into a Radio 4 series.
Keen is offering a helping hand for the first three events as the Centre for Life’s “comedian in residence”, leading workshops that offer advice on presentation and the art of injecting comedy into a presentation.
“I’m going to use Bright Club to encourage people to empathise with plants”, says Dr Pullen.
“Plants get stressed just like us, and we’ve got some things in common in how we experience stress. Plants respond in milliseconds to changes in environment. Humans respond in nanoseconds, but that’s still impressive.
“Plants use calcium as a signal relay. It’s like when the Spanish Armada approached Penzance, and someone lit a bonfire as a pre-arranged signal. That caused someone else to light a bonfire, and another, until the information eventually got to Francis Drake.
“They use different signals based on whether they’re cold, being eaten, or being invaded by an insect.
“Plant biology tends not to get the headlines because plants aren’t fluffy and cute. But what I’m hoping to do is to give people an impression of how a plant feels.
“In preparing a routine, I’m already beginning to think in a different way about how to put some of these ideas across. The poor people in my pub have been bombarded with many of them. Once something’s been personalised, it’s relatable, it’s human, and it’s a story.”
