Steven Barkhimer, Jim Spencer and

Robert Bonotto in "The Man Who"

Photo by CAROLLE Photography

2005-2006 Season

The Man Who

   A Theatrical Research

by Peter Brook, Marie Hélène Estienne and Oliver Sacks

Directed by Wesley Savick

Performances Thursday, April 20 through May 7

Hypnotic and mysterious is the human brain. The Man Who is an imaginative and moving adaptation of case histories about brain-injured individuals from Oliver Sacks' book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat."  Brook refers to   the staged creation as "a theatrical research;" as theater it becomes an exhilarating and remarkable exploration of impaired minds performed by an ensemble of four actors. Instead of a sense of dread, we experience a sense of wonder at the implicit connection between their world and ours. Magical, funny, inspiring and heroic, The Man Who masters a complex subject with poetry, beauty and simplicity.           

Wednesdays & Thursdays at 7:30 PM

Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00 PM

Sundays at 3:00 PM

*Special Saturday Matinee April 22 at 3:00 PM

All performances at  Boston Playwrights’ Theatre

949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
MBTA: Green line, “B” Line, Pleasant Street Stop.

Look what The Boston Globe Weekend Arts - Stages said about The Nora:

PLAY PROBES DISORDERS OF THE MIND
By Catherine Foster, Globe Staff  |  April 14, 2006

''The Man Who," a theatrical adaptation by venerated director Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne of Oliver Sacks's book ''The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," is rarely performed. In it, four actors play 17 neurologically impaired patients and their doctors in a series of encounters. Some critics have said there's not much of a plot.

But the ideas in what Brook has described as a ''theatrical research" were so compelling that Mary C. Huntington, artistic director of the Nora Theatre Company, was moved to select it for her season. The New England premiere begins previews on Thursday at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

Huntington says she'd known of Sacks's book for years, but Brook and Estienne's adaptation was new to her.

''I was intrigued by many things about it," Huntington says of the play. ''First, just the stories of these individuals undergoing treatment. I was amazed at how people deal with these afflictions and get along in the world. And there were people close to me who had undergone severe brain injuries. So I had a personal point of view in delving into the play."

In ''The Man Who," patients have such conditions as visual agnosia, schizophrenia, aphasia, and hemineglect.

Director Wesley Savick, who introduced ''The Man Who" to Huntington and will helm the production, was also fascinated by Sacks's work.

''I was drawn to the extraordinary aspect of these scenes and these people," he says. ''How do people behave when their perception of the world is so fundamentally different than the rest of us?"

The play, he says, ''addresses not just the alterations of perception on a neurological level, but the way we perceive things in the theater. It struck me as a particularly meaningful and profound intersection of form and content, science and art."

Theatergoers, for example, sometimes have to alter their perception to suspend disbelief. ''The Scottish king [Macbeth] convinces us that he sees the dagger floating before him," says Savick. ''Brook is going to the heart of this."

According to Savick, Brook and Estienne did research by spending a year at mental hospitals around France and England with eight to 10 actors to observe patients and their doctors. The hospitals finally got fed up with the disruption, so Brook cut the number of actors to four.

''A lot of the text is not directly Oliver Sacks's," says Savick. ''A lot of dialogue came from similar cases throughout Europe that the actors saw."

Brook and Estienne then developed the piece over the course of several months at Brook's institute in Paris. In the early '90s, he toured it around the world.

For the Nora production, Savick brought in two neurologists to watch a rehearsal so the actors could gain some additional insight into the case studies.

''They were intrigued by what we were doing and offered their insights into the patients' behavior and doctor-patient relationships," he says. ''I was very encouraged when they said we were on track."

The pair came again to see a run-through, Savick says. ''They were concerned that audiences not think this was fiction, even though it's so extraordinary. They work with these people all the time. And they recognized what they were seeing onstage."

Questions? Email info@thenora.org