Meet your Lizardbrain

In a new play by Philadelphia theater company linkurl:Pig Iron,;http://www.pigiron.org/ the central character is a PhD botanist, but the play is not about botany, nor academia. He also has many of the traits associated with autism -- trouble connecting with and understanding people and many obsessive traits. But the play is not about autism, either -- at least, not directly.

James Sugg in __Chekhov Lizardbrain__
Image: Pig Iron Theatre Company

Ultimately, the play, __Chekhov Lizardbrain__, is about the brain, and its power to manipulate the past, present, and future. And it's about how everyone's brain also manipulates reality, to a greater or lesser extent.In __Chekhov Lizardbrain__ the audience sees how the world looks from main character Dmitri's troubled mind. We see how brains choked by pathology filter upsetting moments, making them innocuous or even pleasant. In his mind, brothers who teased him as a child and forgot him as an adult now admire his scientific achievements and think of him as part of their family. Tense, nuanced, or emotional moments are converted into straightforward, antiseptic exchanges. "Memory is not like film, that's the number one rule of consciousness," Dmitri says.In the words of the play's narrator and titular character, Chekhov Lizardbrain: __Everything you experience here this evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, is mediated by your senses, turned into sensory information, and then, in an audacious feat of daring, translated by you into ideas, ideas that you can sort and understand.This is one of the many rules of consciousness, Ladies and Gentlemen: Everything we see and hear is removed from the thing itself.__The play opens with Dmitri moving from Portland, Oregon back to his hometown of Oswego, New York, and buying his old family home, which had since been bought by a group of brothers he grew up with.At the center of all the action is Chekhov Lizardbrain, played by the same actor who plays Dmitri, Obie-award-winner linkurl:James Sugg.;http://www.jamessugg.com/sound_design/home.html This character is as puzzling as his name -- he acts as the play's "ringmaster," telling all other characters (including Dmitri and the three brothers) what to do. He speaks with a reptilian drawl, as if he were a frog struggling to form human words; his body movements are stiff and slow, with a hand shaped like a webbed foot.

James Sugg in __Chekhov Lizardbrain__
Image: Pig Iron Theatre Company

As an additional clue to Chekhov Lizardbrain's identity, the play's program contains a quote from linkurl:Temple Grandin,;http://www.templegrandin.com/templehome.html a professor of animal science at Colorado State University who is also autistic, and has written widely about the way her brain interprets the world. According to Grandin, the human brain is "really three different brains, each one built on top of the previous at three different times in evolutionary history...Roughly speaking, the reptilian brain corresponds to that in lizards and performs basic life support functions like breathing." This quote matches how Dmitri describes Chekhov Lizardbrain in the play. "He's very in touch with his lower brain, you know, from the medulla oblongata, considering the theory of the three brains. That the upper brain is human brain and the middle brain is dog brain and the lowest brain is the lizard brain."Chekhov enters the action via Dmitri's imagination, as he converts real-life conversations into something more pleasant that he believes might appear in a Chekhov play, by giving characters Russian names and top hats.According to director Dan Rothenberg, the play was born out of a brainstorming session with other Pig Iron members. Someone wanted to do something on the topic of Chekhov, who was a doctor. Coincidentally, Rothenberg and another member, Dito van Reigersberg (who plays one of the brothers) were both reading Temple Grandin at the time. They put the two concepts together, and came up with the title __Chekhov Lizardbrain__. "We titled the project before we put anything together," says Rothenberg.In portraying a troubled mind, the members "did no medical research," says Rothenberg. Rather, they thought about Grandin, and the characters in Chekhov's play __The Three Sisters__, and people they knew who also struggle to understand people's intentions. "I don't want people to just pity Dmitri," he says. "I want people to admire his crazy system of making sense of the world." The decision to make Dmitri a botanist was an "intuitive choice," he says, given that he is less comfortable with people, and a scientific thinker like Grandin and Chekhov.But, it's no accident that Dmitri is an academic, Rothenberg adds, given that obsessive people often thrive there, where the trait is rewarded. "Certainly a lot of scientists [who have seen the play] have said 'I know somebody like that,'" Rothenberg laughs.__Chekhov Lizardbrain__ is playing at the linkurl:Under the Radar Festival;http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/ in New York City through January 17.
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[12th November 2008]*linkurl:Hamming it up;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/56225/
[18th December 2009]*linkurl:__boom__ boosts science theatre;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56157/
[19th November 2009]