My friend is really good at getting money. Oh, God, not stealing, no. Finding tenders, writing applications, successful funding bids, that sort of thing. Persuading people to give you cash on the basis of what you say you'll do for them isn't too different from a standard job interview process but it still feels like a cheat code. Turns out there's quite a lot of money in science, especially if you offer to create theatre to make the public aware of their work. Arts and culture are rarely commended for their ability to fit into or blend with almost anything, like a contortionist, or chocolate.

Fresh from a decision to put up (give acting a go) rather than shut up (stay in production) my friend told me that she'd got some science communication money. The project was to write and perform a show about the local part played in a global physics discovery. It had to have broad appeal, ranging from younger kids to, yikes, youths. She asked me if I'd be up for not only writing it with her but also be in it. Luck and fate are both four-letter words. After extensive, awe-inspiring interviews with the scientists involved, we got to work on the script. Turns out it's pretty easy to write when you just need whoever's watching to know something by the end that they didn't coming in. The only hitch was figuring out how to make any of it funny. So far, so human condition. It was turning into an endearingly sketchy, borderline vaudeville two-hander. We needed another cast member, and a man at that, so I roped in my talented musician friend, who'd also taken the freelance creative leap.

The morning of our penultimate writing session, Trump is elected. Is it okay if we meet later, I text her, I'm finding it hard to get out of bed but I still want to work eventually. Her reply comes quickly, agreeing, commiserating. When I finally make it to hers, we hug blankly. Shock is not always surprise but it is, in every instance, the impact of a blunt instrument. As soon as we sat together in our two-person rally, we knew we had to write it in somehow. His image was that freakish and ubiquitous, there was no escape, not even for the kids. Only thing crueller than monsters being in the world is to say that there's no reason to be scared. We shoved in a rude implication, and I gave our man a speech along the lines of anxiety being close to caring, because that's what I needed and I reckoned someone else might too.

Draft done, we rehearsed in our future venues, which happened to be the university's lecture theatres. Rows of seats towering above us, no defined stage. Running lines, I couldn't get the words to stick. I wrote these fucking things, what the fucking fuck. A woman in her mid-20s, I did round after round of Look, Cover, Write, Check, until the words became doodles and noise. The show opened to reams of bussed in secondary school kids. There's no more effective inoculation to puncture any sense of self-satisfaction than looking out into a sea of bored, raging faces. However, when we got to the Trump joke, the audience laughed hard and long every time. People, especially younger people, will reward you with their attention if you don't patronise them. Who knew? The ticketed, consenting crowds were warmer and we did get to relax that much more. But the day went quickly starting at 9am to do three shows. We were tired and didn't talk to each other much, saving our voices, but had built a grace to resetting the stage. Our final performance featured a Q&A with the scientists, who got a standing ovation. My friend and I stole a glance at each other as we joined in with the applause. Job done.

Not long after the first run, my friend unlocked another pot, enough for us to tour to another university for one night only. She drives the whole way, sustained by coffee and episode after episode of The Adam Buxton Podcast. We sing along with the jingles for the first three before our enthusiasm tapers off. We settle into a comfortable silence, taking in the rural landscape speeding past our respective windows. We pull up to the Holiday Inn, sarcastically referencing the glamour, then find ourselves earnestly enjoying splashing about in the pool. We take a long walk through fields to the only pub nearby, for dinner and one drink. Our walk back is silent. We all watch an episode of the new Queer Eye. For the straight guy? I ask. For anyone, corrects my friend. I cry at the end and get no sleep at all. I perform in a daze, trying to disengage with the loud volume of my inner monologue, spotting two little girls dancing and singing along in crowd during the closing number. They had a nice time, that's good, have I passed on a joy of knowledge or do they want to be up here, people talk about catching the acting bug, is it fatal, kind of wild the paradox about the determination required for creative pursuits, that's pretty uncreative thinking if you ask me, not sure my pupils are doing all that well but look they're still dancing, they did have a nice time, that's good.

Off the success of our first show, my friend secures funding to create another, based on that model. We got the gang back together, this time interviewing engineers to try and encourage uptake of relevant subjects in higher education. I was back on medication and found it easier to remember my lines. Funny, that. It was the lines that were harder to write this time. My friend and I had to figure out how to encourage the youth to have hope and believe in their futures, without resorting to froth, in a show under an hour, while also getting across the basics of engineering as a discipline. What did we know?

So we opened it up to them, planting a suggestion box, paper, and pens on stage for what they'd like to see in the future. It was a fun part of the show, our man and myself announcing we'd read some out, watching the teenagers burrow into each other with snorts. We'd siphon through the offerings in real time, showing each other crudely drawn dildo after crudely drawn dildo, breaking character to corpse. Finally, he unfurled a suitable scrap. "Make a machine that takes in carbon and puts out oxygen," he projected, then turned to me with a huh, nice idea expression. Then, a split second later, came the best improvisation I have ever managed and will ever manage in my life, years before I even braved an improv class, not from me but through me, something so obvious, so true, that it was more like breathing than speaking and yet I utter, "Isn't that just a tree?" Silence. Then a smattering of laughter that said, Oh, duh, of course.

We have so much already.