HippieMBA

This could be awesome.

Found out last night that a preliminary grant that my company has submitted to the National Science Foundation’s Informal Science Education stream has received an “encourage” notice to submit a full proposal.  This is the closest that we have come yet to actually getting one of these grants, which is a key strategy in our plan for the future of the company.  When they give an encourage notice it means “Don’t change a thing!  Just beef it up into a full proposal!” and means that we are pretty high up in the running for this.

Now here’s the really cool part: The grant is to make interstitial television spots that are science sketch comedy created by scientists and comedians/improv actors that will be distributed over PBS networks nationally.  So, if we get this, my full time job will be to manage that project for two years while I continue my MA in Museum Studies.  That wouldn’t suck at all.

Here’s the crazy part: This whole idea came out of a show that the company did in 2004 and 2005 in New York, where we brought scientists and improv actors together to create comedy sketches that eventually turned into a full length show about physics that takes place in a bar at the edge of a black hole, called Happy Hour at the Event Horizon.  Spending a year and a half working on that project got us really interested in working with scientists more, planted the seed that would mean changing our business strategy from just creating shows about science to creating artistic works, such as performances, as outreach for scientists and science organizations, AND led my wife to get really interested in studying scientist/artist collaboration academically, and eventually led her to Cornell.  So if we get this grant, it will mean that the show that got us up here to Ithaca in the first place will be the exact thing that my wife’s PhD dissertation will be about.

Full proposal is due in November, if we get the grant, it will start next summer.  My fingers are white from being crossed.