Tomorrow I’ll be leading a workshop at the Joaquin Bustoz Math-Science Honors Program at Arizona State University. It is part of the Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center (MCMSC) directed by Carlos Castillo Chavez and at which I am a newly appointed associate research professor. The workshop will be different than most lectures or talks delivered to these high achieving students from across Arizona and the Navajo Nation.

It's the third Friday of every month for the next few months: an opportunity to work with Carrie Lobman, director of pedagogy at the East Side Institute which developed the performance based approach that informs services provided by improvscience. A central belief to this approach is that human beings are active builders and creators of their lives.

As the wave of play and improvisation is sweeping the public sphere in creativity and innovation research and practices, it’s both exhilarating and frightening to ride the wave. I watched recently a brief interview with a surfer, Garrett McNamarra who looks for killer waves to ride. For me they would be killer waves, but in a number of articles or interviews they simply call them big waves. You know, “the monster”, some 60 to 90 feet high, that can crush a cruise ship or freighter.

As we end 2012 and enter 2013, I am struck by the number of scientists and performance activists who are bringing performance and science together. Last year, as we entered 2012 I was excitedly and rapidly preparing a gathering of scientists, educators, health professionals and artists in Farmington, CT.