Andrea Jones-Rooy to Present WAYWARD Solo Show at Caveat

Andrea Jones-Rooy is bringing her solo show Wayward to Caveat in New York City for a one-night, live and live-streamed performance on Friday, November 6.

Jones-Rooy had followed the rules: earned the Ph.D., gotten the fancy jobs, and was a university professor in Shanghai. But when a chance encounter led her into the city's glittering, chaotic circus underworld, she discovered an entirely different universe with different people, different rules, and completely different ideas about what it means to succeed.

Wayward is described as a riotous, exhilarating and true story about a professor living a double life, finding magic in unexpected places, and discovering possibilities she never knew existed. Blending comedy, storytelling, science, and circus into one 75-minute solo show, Wayward is an invitation to venture beyond the world you know and imagine what else your life could be.

Although she'd been performing in plays and dance since high school, Jones-Rooy spent her first decade as an adult as a very serious academic. It wasn't until she was, to her surprise, cast in Cirque le Soir Shanghai that she became a professional performer. Since then, she's spent a decade dancing between circus, comedy, and public-facing, funny-but-informative lectures about using science to improve the world.

She has been wanting to tell this story for a decade. After returning from Shanghai she spent time as a professor at NYU, and a data-scientist at FiveThirtyEight, but her colleagues and students mostly did not know she spent two years as a circus performer in a nightclub in Shanghai doing trapeze, fire, and contortion: 'I feel like I'm going to explode if I don't tell this story. Not because crazy things happened (though they did), but because it taught me to think MUCH bigger about my own life. It was SO hard-wired into my brain that success was a tenure-track faculty job that I literally had to perform naked and covered in glitter in order to see that I was capable of so much more.'

Jones-Rooy hopes Wayward will inspire audiences to do whatever it is they are pulled toward, but afraid to try: 'My hope is that the show is super fun, but also that it humanizes China and the people of Shanghai (especially in today's fraught political climate). Most of all I hope to inspire audiences to say yes to that weird thing they have always wanted to do, but have been too afraid to try. I wish I could jam it in the brain of anyone who ever says, 'oh, I couldn't do that!', you can do WAY more than you think, and I am living proof.'

Wayward premieres live on-stage and live-streamed at Caveat in NYC for one night only, for now, on November 6.

Event Details

WHERE: Caveat, 21A Clinton St., New York, NY 10002 (and live-streaming)

WHEN: Friday, November 6, at 7pm ET (doors 6:30pm)

Tickets: caveat.nyc

About Andrea Jones-Rooy

Andrea Jones-Rooy, Ph.D. is a political scientist, data scientist, comedian, and circus performer whose career has taken her from the halls of academia to the circus stages of Shanghai. Formerly a professor at NYU and researcher at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight, she has spoken at the UN, performed a magic trick for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and once even beat Bill Nye on a science-themed game show.

Jones-Rooy currently hosts the podcasts Behind the Data and Political Reality, and advises companies, universities, and nonprofits on using science to make the world better. Among her recent projects, she has helped apply a social science lens to reducing antisemitism, improving US-China relations, increasing scientific literacy among Americans, and figuring out how to persuade companies to hire talent based on skills rather than pedigree. She is a resident lecturer for Lectures on Tap.