The Global Intelligencer , and online newspaper exploring individual, social, and global transformation, is featuring an article on the emerging field of Quantum Comedy - an integration of scientific knowledge, spirituality, and creative expression used for more than just a laugh. Comic Vanda Mikoloski uses stand-up comedy as a tool for expanding awareness and inspiring new thought. Here are a few excepts from Frank Levitt's article, Stand-up comedy takes on quantum physics, on Vanda's act:
A New Thought comedy routine about consciousness and personal evolution...throw in a few jokes about particle physics, superposition and multiple potentialities existing at the same time and you begin to get the flavor of Vanda Mikoloski’s outrageous quantum comedy routine; a way-out of the ordinary laugh at life as we know it.
Take Vanda’s response to the state patrol officer who has just stopped her for speeding. “Let me explain superposition to you, officer, because clearly you’re enslaved by a Newtonian viewpoint. See, there is a Vanda going 85 in a 55, but there's also a Vanda going 55 in an 85. There's a speed of light Vanda and a perfectly still Vanda. There are many, many Vanda potentials, officer, you see? You just collapsed the wave function on the wrong Vanda, that's all.”
Interfaith director at Evergreen State College in Washington State, Chaplain Fred LaMotte says Vanda’s act is a great counter-balance for spiritual self-importance. “Vanda's willingness to be vulnerable and poke fun at her own ego is really a model of courage for us all,” says LaMotte. “Her humor is not only wild, wonderful fun: it is a breath of grace that sweeps away our self-importance and allows us to blossom in simple humanity, in the present moment. Of course, this is where spirituality really begins.”
Vanda explains. “Every now and then I know I’ve gone too far when they look at me like I’m the headlights and they’re the deer.”...But, as Vanda points out, audiences will eat steak if you feed them steak, and hamburger if you feed them hamburger. Doing what she calls “writing up,” creating higher-brow material than ordinary, works as long as you give the audience context and authentic examples. And “writing up” is what Vanda is all about.
“My intention is to have a comedy show that not only is funny, but one that actually inspires and heals people as we laugh at what unites us: our crazy humanity. What would it be like if you came back from a standup comedy show saying, ‘Well I laughed a lot and that was great. I also perceive reality from an expansive context and …I grew a limb back!’ That would be way cool. Really.”
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