Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Opening night 28^th February 2020, Anton Podbevšek Teater
Running time 65 minutes. No intermission.

Discussion after performance within Young Theatre program.

Director and adaptation Ivana Djilas
Dramaturg Jera Ivanc
Composer Boštjan Gombač
Video Vesna Krebs
Set designer Sara Slivnik
Costume designer Jelena Proković
Assistant costume designer Katarina Šavs
Language consultant Barbara Rogelj
Creative designer Eva Mlinar
Photography Barbara Čeferin

Cast
Aleš Valič, Aljaž Jovanović, Boštjan Gombač

Oliver Sacks (1933 – 2015), a British clinical neurologist and university professor, or, as he described himself, a "simple rural physician and storyteller", was the author of numerous scientific articles including some international bestsellers, and the winner of prestigious awards from the most eminent American literary, scientific and academic institutions. He rose to prominence with his book Awakenings, which recounts clinical cases of patients suffering the effects of the encephalitis lethargica pandemic (also known as "sleeping sickness") that broke out in the early 1920s. Less than twenty years after its release, the book was reworked into a motion picture starring Robin Williams and Robert de Niro. For a long time, the expert public seemed rather disapproving of his science-based bestsellers; the community partly resented his popularity, saying it was incompatible with "serious" science, and criticized him for exploiting his patients by portraying them as bizarre and exotic specimens in the style of Phineas Taylor Barnum’s freak show. However, Sacks was convinced that the case histories in his books were "exemplary", and that they shed light not only on the impact and experience of neurological diseases in individual patients, but also on the crucial and perhaps unexpected aspects of the functioning of the human brain. He came closest to answering the question about the meaning of human existence, which has been addressed by philosophy, art and science since the dawn of humankind, in his book of stories titled as Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, which he has been collecting since the 1960s. These stories about the incredible therapeutic power of music and the endurance of musical memory that can persist in many cases of various brain injuries – otherwise devastating to autobiographical, historical or linguistic memory – show that music is more powerful and more perilous than we can imagine, and that it plays a key role in understanding ourselves, our brains, and our consciousness.