CatCave9 S02E03: A multiverse of slugs, family structures and science
On Thursday 23th March, the filled-to-the-brim Cinéma Oblò was boarded by a friendly crew of nine Catalysts, led by Captain “TheGreat” Dane, and set sail for a 2h cruise in the, often treacherous, waters of improv.
Following suggestions from the audience, we learned that the worst babysitter in the world is a disgruntled tooth-pulling dentist. We saw the foremost authority on time-travelling snails (they do it by wormholes) discuss the existence of multiversal slugs. We saw how to effectively handle a speeding ticket in the 60s, if your mouth is additionally remote controlled by a higher entity. And we learned about throwing birthday parties for your experiment’s bacteria.
The factual science in this Episode came from our science guest-spot speaker Sara Mitri from UNIL, who told us about her studies of small communities of all-important microbes, as a stepping stone towards the understanding larger microbial communities such those as living in our guts. Our improvisers leaped directly into a social experiment of scientists and subjects, scientist-subjects and all combinations thereof. Oh, did I mention this happened in a bunker?
By the second half, we made certain that science also went a little fiction. We had astronauts [Do you know what the Russians over there in the other space station are doing? Oh, trust us, we found out!], the lord of the Sith, very visible neutrinos, cosmonauts, telescope-loving aliens, and interstellar hole-escaping worms (surprising, since snails are, as we all know, the only animals to use wormholes for time travel).
In our second long form we gave power over to our audience, who we gave the divine power of steering the scenes along. Inspired by “Vegemite” our improvisers explored the future of family structures in three-way, four-way, and sheep-way families. Thanks to modern genetics, none of this is too far out of reach. It only gets problematic if Grandpa constantly wants to keep his genes in the mix. Thanks to one of our audience members, we were able to witness some scientists trying out their singing skills.
As the saying goes, in space nobody can hear your pick-up lines. But at CatCave9 we do (at a chance of ~1/100). If yours wasn’t used (at a chance of ~99/100), try again at our next show on Thursday 20th April at Cinema Oblo.
