The Shrew event

My talk for Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production of “Taming of the Shrew” last week was terrific fun! We’d seen the production the night before — I’ll review that, too — and it gave me an idea for a great opening.

ASP is staging the play in The Garage in Harvard Square, which they’ve done up to look like a divey bar circa early 1980s or so. It’s the first play I’ve ever seen that incorporates the senses of taste and smell — an actor passes around popcorn during intermission (warning everyone who takes some “You can’t sue us”) and Grumio, Petruchio’s servant, cooks sausages on an electric fry pan, filling the space with their savory aroma. Shakespeare in Smell-O-Vision! Only ASP, I’m telling you.

Anyway, the dive-bar setting, and the extremely violent staging of the play, got me thinking about this year’s Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner: a team of Swiss scientists who won “for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.”

So before the talk, I made sure Mr. Improbable had a seat up in front, right where I would be talking. And I got a bottle of Sam Adams and a mug. And this, more or less, is what I said:

“‘Taming of the Shrew’ teaches us that a woman should always put her husband before herself, so before I begin my talk, I’d like to ask my husband, Marc Abrahams, to stand up and take a bow.” (He did) “Marc is known in my column and blogs as Mr. Improbable — for many reasons, the main one being that he publishes the Annals of Improbable Research and produces the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

“When we saw the play last night, it made me think of this year’s Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner” — which I then described as above. “Now, this is what might surprise you: you can actually do far more damage with an empty bottle of beer than a full one. An empty bottle is a better weapon. Counterintuitive, no? After all, a full bottle is heavier, by the weight of the beer.

“But here’s the thing. A full bottle of beer already has so much pressure inside it, from the thick, foaming, raging beer, that it takes much less external pressure to make it shatter. When you’ve emptied out all that beer” — and here I poured the beer out and served it to Marc with a dramatic “Milord,” and I must say he was an awfully good sport about basically being used as a prop — “you have a much more effective weapon.”

“Just like Kate, when she empties out all that rage, when she stops holding in all that pressure, becomes a much more strong and focused person. And a much more effective weapon, as her sister and the Widow can attest!

“And now I will stop being Mrs. Improbable” — turning to Marc — “and you can start being Mr. Conduct. Because as ‘Taming of the Shrew’ really teaches us, a happy marriage isn’t about one person being in charge, or about everything being equal all the time, either. It’s about knowing when to take the spotlight and when to give it up to your partner.”

It went over pretty doggone well, I must say. More on the play proper later, but in the meantime, here‘s a print interview I did for the ASP website.

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