Interview Corner: Woman on Edge

Emily Levine

Profession: Speaker, comedian

Claim To Fame: Calls herself a philosopher-comic

Emily Levine has no problem overpowering hecklers, but she'd rather use her wit for making connections—between people and between ideas. After working in improv, stand-up, and sitcoms, she discovered quantum entanglement and chaos dynamics and somehow found a way to build comedy acts around science—and offer them, loaded with advice and social commentary, to corporate audiences. Her latest one-woman show, Emily at the Edge of Chaos, combines physics, philosophy, and an emotional account of overcoming a strange malady. She's currently turning the show into a movie.

How did you get into comedy?

If I had my dream, I would be the Oracle of Delphi. I felt the only other arena where a woman could tell the truth as she sees it is stand-up. That's one hell of a rationale to lay on that art form. The great thing about the Delphic Oracle is she wasn't exactly clear—it was all in the interpretation. But I'm not so Delphic. Not necessarily right, but clear. Of course, the cave from whence the oracles gave their prophesies was over a natural-gas source and they were stoned all the time and I am not. I did stand-up, but something was missing. And it was me. I didn't find out until I did a show about physics for physicists, with material that was engaging me.

Why did physics engage you?

The book that sparked it was about quantum physics, by Heinz Pagels and called The Cosmic Code. I wanted to learn about Bell's theorem. It's what made Einstein object, "God does not play dice with the universe." For me, there's nothing more liberating than finding out that things are not as you've been told. Then I read Chaos, and that was like a woosh of energy. It just felt so alive! And Newton's universe felt so dead. Around this time, a friend invited me to speak to physicists. I knew from the moment I stepped on the stage that this was who I was.

How do you turn that into comedy?

I like it best when you take the most abstract concept—like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which basically says that the more you know about one thing, the less you know about the other—and use it to explain concrete events, like 9/11: The more we knew about the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress, the less we knew about Osama Bin Laden.

Do you have a philosophy of comedy?

I have a talk online. The comments are all very flattering, but one says, "All she's doing is saying pretty things so people feel better." And if I were more technically capable, I would have gone right on and said, "You are so right. That's what I know how to do." That's not how I would want to see myself. I'd want to be cooler than that. Actually, I shouldn't say that. In my youth, I would have preferred to be hipper, but I like that people feel that way.

But you do make points.

It's social satire. I love the science, but only because it helps me look at things in society, things like sexism or racism. The whole individualism component of our culture is supported by the idea that particles are isolated bits of matter. But quantum physics sees two kinds of particles: particles of matter (fermions) and particles of relationality (bosons). To me this bodes the end of the action hero, who doesn't take responsibility for the impact his actions have on others. You never see an action hero come back after the car chase and help the fruit vendor restack his limes up into a pyramid. Time for an interaction hero.

Why would a company hire a comedian for a keynote?

One thing I can do is put issues in a completely different context and in a completely different language. Most professional cultures have assumptions they never question. An uppity mime once told me it took 20 years to learn how to mime properly. I said, "So you have to be stupid to go into mime? It takes only two years to learn how to talk."

Do you consider yourself a real philosopher?

I lack the training and rigorous logic. Much of my thinking is informed by intimations as well as information. Which is why I want to focus more on being an "oracle": People put questions in a container, and I fish them out and answer them. It's so much more adaptable to audiences' purposes. And I'm so much better free-form. The hardest thing about the acromegaly [a syndrome that brought arthritis, fatigue, and other symptoms until it was diagnosed a couple years ago and a pituitary tumor was removed] was losing the ability to think on my feet because of the brain fog. That was so frightening, because that was the one thing I always had. The worst moment was on Bill Moyers' roundtable in 2002, right before the election. I couldn't think of anything to say.

How does your latest show differ from previous shows?

The first time I performed at a conference after the brain surgery I was asked to talk about it. People responded very, very strongly. The movie was to be about physics but we started weaving the personal story in and it high-jacked the entire movie.

Was the show emotional for you?

Yes, it was. The director was really uninterested in the comedy. But I was concerned it was becoming a genre piece. A woman gets this disease, and then she overcomes it, and then she learns something from it, whoopee. There's an unscripted emotional moment toward the end, and every time I've done it, I cry. And I have an aesthetic distaste for a person standing on stage crying.

What's the format of your movie?

The center of the movie is my stage show, and we use animation. Any references I make, instead of footnotes, Aristotle will pop up, Heisenberg will pop up. And real scientists will chide me, or congratulate me if I get the science right, and they'll provide real explanations. One of our goals is to make science accessible to people.