Radiolab in Seattle: Totally RadioRad
I would bet $10 that at least seven out of ten people went home after the recent Radiolab performance at 5th Avenue Theatre and tried parting their hair on the opposite side. That's the power of Radiolab: it gently challenges your assumptions about something as seemingly innocuous as a hair part.
Radiolab (for those unfamiliar) is an award-winning radio documentary series out of New York's WYNC hosted by Jad Aburman and Robert Krulwich. Each episode has a theme, usually something way deep like altruism, unintended consequences or mortality.
Deepness in the wrong hands is usually a total snooze-fest, or worse, elitist bombastery. Radiolab is the exact opposite of those things. It's funny, informative, stimulating, and as they showed us so brilliantly in their live adaptation of the usually radio-only show, entertaining.
The theme for the three-stop-only (NYC, LA and SEA) live performance tour was "Desperately Seeking Symmetry" and combined story-telling, live cello music, monologues and projected animations. There were some initial computer technical problems bad enough to ruin any house manager's evening, but after some impromptu cello music and an engineering doggedness everything was fixed, and the show was on.
Through equal parts Greek Mythology and Neuroscience, the first act asked if there is symmetry in love. Are there, as Aristophanes asked, "other halves" out there looking for us, perfectly complementary long-lost soul twins just waiting to be found? Can you use brain imaging to explain what a connection is? Turns out: no. At least none that could be found in fifteen minutes.
Next up: science. We learned about chirality, where perfectly reflective molecules can be drastically, and sometimes toxically, different from another. Also, many things about matter and anti-matter, the miracle of existence and that -- in Seattle -- the audience will "WHOOOO" for an astro-physicist.
The topic of beauty came last. It is said that facial symmetry is correlated to attractiveness, and that attractiveness is something that one can control through preening. The catch is that you can't see yourself the way others do. The nature of a mirror means that you see your opposite. We heard an interview with a man who has dedicated himself to the theory that you can change your life by changing your hair part. After looking at some famous hair flip switches (Superman, Jimmy Carter) I wasn't entirely unconvinced. We were left with a vignette of photos illustrating the little symmetries in life: sounds, movements, expressions, gestures, and postures which align with each other in typically unnoticed ways. We were left thinking about the itty-bitty ties that bind and looking for them all around us.
It's hard to convey the awesomeness of this performance; if it could even be possible, it was better than their radio show. I wish that there was something like this to be seen in our city on a regular basis. For now, I'll just be thinking about my hair.
