Review: The STEAM Room (Enmore Theatre)

When someone says “Comedy” what generally comes to mind? Plants? Astrobiology? Geology? Perhaps cancer diagnostics?

Those of you that are fans of Shondaland may have been swept up in a fictional ‘Great Experiment’ the last few weeks, but here closer to home, there was another great experiment happening. A great science-comedy experiment.

Founder and science-comedian Luke Stellar began the STEAM Room after identifying that, like him, many STEM PhD students struggled to communicate their ideas in a way that was engaging for people outside of the scientific community. Comedians on the other hand, were able to break down really complicated ideas to make complete strangers laugh. A light bulb went off and the STEAM Room was born.

After a supremely successful show at Factory Theatre as part of the 2022 Sydney Comedy Festival and subsequent shows in Melbourne and Brisbane, the team took on the historic Enmore Theatre on Thursday the 4th of May.

When we say science, many people may be thinking beakers and bunsen burners from chemistry class in high school, but that is cosplay compared to these heavy hitters. We are talking astrobiology, nuclear science, forensics, geology and botany. It’s not the kind of subject matter that you think would be funny to a non-scientific population and yet under the warm guidance of Scary Strangers (the dynamic producer-duo of Ru Halwala and Tom Stevenson) and a handful of iconic comedy mentors, it does.

Through careful curation the STEAM team, takes us on a journey through the world of science. For the 2022 program, the show featured science drag queen Diva Attenbra, geologist and rock fanatic Tara Djokic, corpse jokes from forensic scientist Scott Chadwick, hilarious innuendo with rubber lover Linda Mitchell, musings on the birds and the bees with botanist and plant enthusiast Ruby Stephens, making cancer funny with Pritam Bordhan and practiced astro exploration with founder Luke Stellar.

Bordhan and Stellar were the most comfortable on stage so it was not surprising that Bordhan won the crown for STEAM King and Mitchell and Djokic were able to make ordinary objects from life seem suddenly rib-tickling.

Interspersed with scientists were real comedians Bec Melrose, Melbourne’s Suren Jayemanne and Carolyn Swindell. They were tasked with writing a comedy set about science, which didn’t work out quite as well. They were all fantastic and funny but the “science” was reaching. Jayemanne, easily one of the funniest of the night, openly joked of his “hypotheses” as his only link to the science theme of the show which was just self-deprecating enough that it didn’t matter.

Tiktok sensation and astrophysicist Kirsten Banks jovially warmed up the crowd for the headliner Dr Karl who was, as expected, brilliant. He took the audience through his path to science, the many adventures that got him to where he is now. Simple storytelling filled with plenty of sly-digs at his younger self and charming anecdotes. It seemed as if his set got cut short due to the production running overtime which was disappointing for many of us fans in the audience. Perhaps a venue less in demand would have let the man speak but at least this means there are plenty more stories for next time.

As an experiment, perhaps the most profound finding is the way The STEAM Room demonstrates that comedy, like anything else, can be practiced and learned. Science on the other hand, we better leave that one to the experts.