BIST is partnering with LUCID LUDIC to see Brain Storm at the Toronto Fringe Festival!
Brain Storm is a fascinating play about life with brain injury, communicating with the spirits and a neurosurgeon who believes in life after death below – and we’re going to make an afternoon of it with our members!
Sign up HERE to get your FREE ticket to see this play with BIST on July 13th!
Play Description:
After undergoing surgery, Kate is left with a brain injury, completely upending her sensory perception and relationship to the world. As she struggles to navigate her new life, she looks to her deceased grandmother, a medium who communicated with the spirit of famous Canadian neuro-surgeon Wilder Penfield, channeling his message of hope for a conscious mind that outlives the physical brain. At the core of Kate’s path to recovery is a desire to create art that speaks to her new perceptions, but the process is fraught with seemingly unsurmountable obstacles.
We ask the audience to approach this piece as both the surgeon and patient: with an attitude of curiosity crossed with vulnerability, allowing oneself to be explored and even prodded through the process.
Creation History: Director Taliesin McEnaney’s grandmother was a ‘script mentalist medium’ who channeled written messages from the spirit realm. One of her spirit guides was Dr. Wilder Penfield. Fast- forward 40 years and Taliesin is dealing with a major brain injury within her own family and struggling with many of the questions that Penfield devoted his work to: sensory perception, epileptic seizures, and cognitive changes. Using the scripts from her grandmother’s writings as a textual resource, and translating them into a physical and visual style, BRAIN STORM is Taliesin’s metabolization of these decade-spanning events which asks the question: are our brains magic, machines – or both?
BRAIN STORM is co-created and performed by Hayley Carr, Maïza Dubhé, Shayna Virginillo, and Alexandra Montagnese. Conceived of and directed by Taliesin McEnaney, set and costume designed by Will Bezek with lighting design by Claire Hill.
WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR
