Pig Iron Theatre's CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN Returns to New York

Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company will present encore engagement of it's Obie Award winning CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN New York City (Jan. 7-17) this winter. This surreal comedy loosely inspired by Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters and the "Three Brain" theory of Paul D. MacLean is directed by Dan Rothenberg with text by Robert Quillen Camp and the ensemble.

CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN dives into the center of an autistic mind. In twists and turns that take us from neuroscience to a domestic squabble to the circus ring, CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN captures a mind as it zigzags back and forth over troubling memories, attempting to mold them into neat Russian dramas. Dmitri, our protagonist, replays his memories until they are ornamented and decorated into a comforting fiction; what we witness is a kind of mental circus.

The cast includes Pig Iron co-founders Quinn Bauriedel and Dito van Reigersberg; Pig Iron Company Member James Sugg (winner of the 2008 Obie Award for CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN); and newcomer Chad Lindsey ("subway hero" actor recently seen in Kaspar Hauser at TheFlea and Notes on the Land of the Earthquake & Fire at FringeNYC). The set is designed by Hungarian artist-designer Anna Kiraly, whose innovative design for Pig Iron's installation-bazaar Pay Up was recently featured
at the Prague Quadrennial. Lighting design is by James Clotfelter (of Miro Dance Theater and Rennie Harris Puremovement). Sound design is by Nick Kourtides (Barrymore Award 2006 for his design of Pig Iron's Mission to Mercury). Olivera Gajic designed the costumes.

The performance draws from Paul Maclean's Triune Brain Theory. MacLean noticed that when the human brain is dissected, one discovers a "paleomammalian" layer that looks almost identical to a pig or dog brain; this layer controls breathing, sleeping, hunger, and the startle response. Cutting deeper into the brain, one finds a "lizard brain" in the form of the human brain stem. This area is responsible for emotions, connections between individuals, and territorial behavior. A thrid layer is the "neomammalian brain," our large neocortex, which contains the wiring for symbolic thinking,
self-awareness, ambivalence and language. In her bestseller Animals in Translation, autistic author Temple Grandin proposes that her own empathy with animals comes from an compromised "human brain" and a compensating "dog brain" and "lizard brain." Templeton notes, "here's the really interesting part: each one of those brains has its own kind of intelligence, its own sense of time and space, its own memory, and its own subjectivity."

Pig Iron Theatre Company has been creating original performance works in Philadelphia since 1995, making plays about live music, dead people, neuroscience and thwarted love affairs through a unique method of collaborative creation and with a signature physical approach to character. Past collaborations have included work with the legendary director Joe Chaikin, playwright Adriano Shaplin, choreographer David Brick, and composer Cynthia Hopkins. Pig Iron's work has been seen at theaters and festivals in London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Romania and Peru. The company's original works have met with critical acclaim and awards, including a 2002 Pew Fellowship in the Arts for the Co-Artistic Directors; 2005 and 2008 OBIE Awards; and multiple Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre.

CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN runs January 7 -17 as part of the Under The Radar Festival. Performances are at CSV Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side -- accessible from the F/V trains at 2nd Avenue, F at Delancey Street, or the J/M/Z trains at Essex Street.) Schedule varies. Tickets range from $20 - $35, available at 212-868-4444 or SmartTix.com.

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