People’s Improvisational Theater

Coaching sessions at the People’s Improv Theater were aimed at helping math experts connect with laypeople and give engaging presentations.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll solve for x and y, where x is a group of high-level mathematicians and y is an improvisational theater workshop. This one’s easy, even if you’re not very good at math. We’ll also look at Mayor Eric Adams’s fund-raising.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWhat’s funny about quadratic equations? Is there something to laugh at in Euclidean geometry?Those questions went unanswered in unusual coaching sessions last week, and no wonder: The instructor’s background is not in Cartesian geometry or matrix algebra but in improvisational theater and standup comedy.The students were mathematicians from across the country — assistant professors, postdoctoral students and a few who are months away from their Ph.D.s, along with Cindy Lawrence, the executive director and chief executive of the National Museum of Mathematics, which arranged the three-day workshop.The sessions were “not so much about being funny,” explained the instructor, Kihresha Redmond, the artistic director of the People’s Improv Theater, a comedy theater and improv training center on West 29th Street that is also known as the PIT. The purpose was to show the mathematicians how to do engaging presentations for laypeople.“You don’t get a Ph.D. because you’re just so-so at something,” Lawrence said, but mathematicians “may not be quick at responding to an audience and they may not be comfortable in front of a room of strangers. Improv helps you build those kinds of skills.”Redmond did not mention it to the group, but she knew something about math. “I thought it was something I was going to major in” when she went to college, she confided one morning last week, before the group arrived. “It was a last-minute left turn to theater.”One session with the mathematicians involved no scripts, no carefully rehearsed “to be or not to be” moments — and no math. It began with Redmond leading some loosening-up exercises. Later, as a drill in thinking fast and talking in front of an audience, she had the mathematicians conduct mock news conferences. They made up companies and products to promote and assigned someone in the group to be the spokeswoman fielding questions. The others in the group played reporters.Angela Avila, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the think-on-your-feet training would be useful in her work, which involves using math to solve agricultural problems, like how many more cows could be fed in a given pasture if a dairy farmer increased the nutrient yield.She said she could use artificial intelligence and “big fancy equations” to come up with an answer, but if she explained it that way, there would probably be a lot of head-scratching.“If I am speaking line from line on my research paper, they’d get lost,” she said, “but if I connect with them and read the energy in the room, that won’t happen.”Lawrence, from the math museum, said she had invited women to the workshop because women are underrepresented in mathematics and in science, technology and engineering. “It’s a problem that self-perpetuates because young women who don’t see female mathematicians get the impression that math is a field that’s not for them, it’s for men,” she said.She wants the participants to help bring about more balance by serving as role models for girls: Each workshop participant is to present a talk about her specialty in a setting like a middle school. She said the idea was “to incentivize women who maybe already have an interest in reaching the younger generation to do so” before their focus is on the publish-or-perish pressures of tenure-track academics.“One of the women told me she was not looking forward to improv and went along with it because it was part of the program,” Lawrence said. “She said this turned her mind completely around.”WeatherOn a partly sunny day with a high near the mid-80s, prepare for a chance of showers and thunderstorms persisting through the evening. At night, temps will drop into the low 70s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).The latest New York newsJohnny Milano for The New York TimesGilgo Beach killings: The wife of Rex Heuermann, the suspect in the Gilgo Beach murders, was away when the killings happened and has not been charged. Experts say it’s not unusual for the spouses of serial killers to be unaware of their crimes. Rikers management: The federal judge in charge of deciding whether New York City jails will be taken over by an outside authority expressed disapproval of how Rikers Island and other lockups are managed.Housing moves: Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a series of executive actions to promote residential real estate development and ease the state’s housing crisis.Museum director: Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, who most recently served as the president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, will be the next director and president of the Museum of the City of New York.Remembering Chisholm: City officials approved designs for a monument in Prospect Park to Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress.Landmarks’ protector: Beverly Moss Spatt, who battled real estate and political interests as chairwoman of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in the 1970s, died on Friday. She was 99.Amassing cash for a campaign that’s two years awayBenjamin Norman for The New York TimesEric Adams was a prodigious fund-raiser when he ran for mayor in 2021. Now, with his eye already on a second term, he is raising big money for 2025 — $1.3 million since January.My colleagues Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Nicholas Fandos write that Adams appears to be eager to amass a large war chest to fend off serious competitors. He faced seven serious opponents in the Democratic primary two years ago and won by only 7,197 votes.With matching funds that Adams campaign officials expect to receive under the city’s public financing system, his re-election effort is expected to have about $4.6 million on hand by the time the 2025 campaign gears up. The matching funds program can turn a $10 contribution from someone who lives in New York City into $90 for a campaign.Adams could be difficult to beat, despite recent setbacks. Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist who was a campaign manager for Andrew Yang, an Adams opponent two years ago, said the mayor’s low approval rating was not terribly worrisome — it fell to 46 percent in a Siena College poll last month. Coffey noted that Michael Bloomberg’s approval rating dipped as low as 24 percent in his second year in office, but he went on to win two more terms.Among Adams’s donors are Marc Holliday and Steve Green, the chief executive and founder, respectively, of the city’s largest commercial landlord, SL Green. Each gave $2,100. Also on the list of Adams contributors are Alexander and Helena Durst, from the Durst real estate dynasty. In addition, the mayor has taken in $12,600 from people who work for Top Rock Holdings, a real estate investment firm.A fund-raiser for the mayor at a performance of the Broadway musical “New York, New York” last month was lucrative despite lackluster reviews for the show. Seats went for as much as $2,100 apiece. Adams’s campaign took in about $600,000 from the event, which a campaign spokesman said was organized by Frank Carone, Adams’s former chief of staff.The real estate industry is also making donations to Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose term runs through 2026. Of the $4.5 million her campaign raised from January through June, more than $885,000 came from developers and real estate investors. Among the donors contributing $18,000 — the new legal maximum for statewide candidates — were Holliday; members of the Durst family; and Scott Rechler and Jeff Blau. Both are Democratic megadonors whose firms are competing with Holliday’s for a casino license for the New York City area.METROPOLITAN diaryA sliceDear Diary:He carried the box while they held each other’s hands, their sweat stuck between warm, tanned palms.They walked down the cobblestone street, and she kept her heels out of cracks in the ground. New York heat held her neck. It smelled like new deodorant, smoke, like summertime.She put her head near his ear.They sat at the bottom of a Brooklyn stoop — the lights were on — and he passed her a slice.Their elbows touched.She wiped the corner of his lip and put her leg over his.He traced constellations between spots of orange oil on her scabby knees.“It tastes good,” she said.“The cheese?” he asked with a laugh.“Yeah.”He whispered in her ear.“But we’re on the street,” she said.“Come on,” he said, and took her hand again.— Laila Hartman-SigallIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Shivani Gonzalez and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nyimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More