DPAC's March 20th STEM-Based Wow in the World Pop-Up Party: Laboratory of Bad Ideas LIVE! Interactive Variety Show Was Entertaining and Educational

This article was first published in Triangle Arts and Entertainment and Triangle Review on 17 March 2022.

The Sunday, March 20th, performance of the Wow in the World Pop-Up Party: Laboratory of Bad Ideas at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) is the first children's-theater show that I've attended since I first heard the words "Covid Nineteen." From the well-dressed young families running down Blackwell Street and the lack of parking, it looked like it was going to be sold out. I was delighted to be among parents and their children again -- witnessing genetics in real time is one of my favorite hobbies. The fact that they were all here in support of science made me almost giddy.

The show started when the three-time Grammy®-nominated duo, The Pop Ups, began performing the Wow in the World theme song. The stage was set like a live radio show, complete with projections of ads for weird and wacky products, based on farts and other things kids can't resist laughing at.

After a respectable attempt by Pop Ups member Jacob Stein to get the audience energized, Wow in the World podcast stars Guy Raz and Mindy Thomas walked on stage to loud applause. Though there was fuzziness in the audio (likely due to Mindy's microphone being too close to her mouth), the introductory banter between Guy and Mindy warmed the audience immediately, particularly when Mindy referred to Durham, NC, as "the capital of Southern Barbecue" and "the North of the South."

After enticing 75% of the audience to lick elbows (inside joke), Mindy and Guy sang a duet. At times, it seemed that they were deliberately singing poorly, for comic effect. Unfortunately, in combination with the distorted audio, the effect fell flat.

The song was followed by a game show in which selected members of the audience guessed which "bad idea" experiment was actually performed by a real scientist. From "toot-trapping" undies to baked-bean baths, this part of the show was highly entertaining, and you couldn't help but learn something. (A new character -- Dennis, a.k.a. "Static Man" -- entered during the bonus round of the game; and if you didn't know who Dennis was beforehand, you still didn't know by the time the show was over.)

Guy and Mindy then challenged the audience to conceptualize the objectivity required of bonafide scientists: it is as if scientists wear blindfolds and have to figure out what something is just by touching (and sometimes tasting) it. Static Man's one-liner was the highlight of this game, and the audience rewarded it with heartfelt laughing.

Mindy and Guy's initial experimental demonstration of Newton's Laws of Motion was interesting to adults and kids alike, but the subsequent reproducibility "experiment" was a missed opportunity to introduce the audience to more entertaining and educational concepts.

The Pop Ups' musical interludes were welcome breaks, and Jason Rabinowitz's abilities on the guitar, keyboard, and his own falsetto vocal cords were music to the ears of adults and children, alike. I greatly enjoyed the puppet-show-like performance of Meteor Dinosaur, though I was disappointed with the minimal puppeteering performed, particularly given the supercool puppeteering demonstrated in Paste Magazine's music video for that song.

The show went on for exactly an hour, the perfect amount of time for the average age of the children in the audience (around 6 or 7 years old) and for my 11-year-old and myself. As we walked back to the car, we discussed the things that we liked and the things that we didn't really like; but the best part of the discussion was the things we learned. There were several. For both of us.

We also both wished the show had not shined bright blinking lights into the audience, as it made our heads hurt a little. We worried how it would affect those prone to seizures or otherwise sensitive to such visual stimulation.

Wow in the World bills itself as a STEM-based "interactive variety show," and that is exactly what it is. My son and I particularly enjoyed the feeling of being in the audience of a live radio show, such as NPR's A Prairie Home Companion (APHC), which his (much) older sister and I listened to religiously when she was a child. The Wow in the World podcast is also supported by NPR. I think it would be great if, like APHC, Wow in the World produced live-audience podcasts via "pop-up party" performances, such as this one. To actually be in the audience of a real radio show (well, podcast) would be something else.