For Immediate Release: January 28, 2007
Media Contact: Carrie Gorn, Pig Iron Theatre Company, 215.480.7423

Pig Iron Theatre Company will present 16 performances of a new original work CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN, a comic exploration of territorial instinct, the knee-jerk reflex, and the animal impulses that lie beneath human behavior. Based on the "Triune Brain Theory" of Paul D. MacLean, with a tip of its hat to doctor/playwright Anton Chekhov and autistic author/slaughterhouse-designer Temple Grandin, CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN features Quinn Bauriedel, Dito van Reigersberg, Geoff Sobelle, and James Sugg, and is directed by Dan Rothenberg. Performances begin March 28 and run through April 15, 2007, at The Latvian Society, located at 7th and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia. Tickets are $20-$30 and can be purchased through the Pig Iron Box Office at (215) 627-1883 or online at www.pigiron.org.

The setting is part laboratory and part vaudeville theater, and the performance careens between trancelike dances, perception experiments, and full-throttle hilarity. The four award-winning performers - Quinn Bauriedel, Geoff Sobelle, James Sugg and Dito van Reigersberg - present a series of highly physical numbers that spring from disparate regions of the brain. "We began with neuroscience but we ended up speaking in tongues," says director Dan Rothenberg. "When we began this process I thought it might be difficult to find compelling material in the absence of uniquely human skills such as imagining the future, having two emotions at once, and logical argument," he continues, "but it turns out the lizardbrain and dogbrain rule our world, and all that we truly care about springs from these deeper, darker regions of the brain."

The performance draws in part from Paul MacLean's "Triune Brain Theory." MacLean noticed that when the human brain is dissected and the neocortex pulled away, one discovers a "paleomammalian" layer beneath it, a brain that looks almost identical to a pig's brain or a dog's brain. If one continues to cut deeper into the brain, one finds a "lizard brain" in the form of the human brain stem. MacLean posited that each "brain" represents a different layer of neurological evolution, and that these older, deeper layers control our most basic functions. So the "reptilian brain" controls breathing, sleeping, hunger, the startle response; the "paleomammalian brain" is responsible for emotions, connections between mother and child and by extension between individuals, hierarchies and some kinds of territorial behavior; and the "neomammalian brain," our large neocortex, contains the wiring for symbolic thinking, self-awareness, ambivalence and language. In her recent bestseller Animals in Translation, autistic author Temple Grandin proposes that her own empathy with animals comes from a compromised "human brain" and a compensating "dog brain" and "lizard brain" - "And," she adds, "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"

8,000 miles and 120 years away, another scientist plumbs the absurdities of human nature: Anton Chekhov, the Russian dramatist and doctor. Chekhov practiced medicine throughout his career, and his works often feature doctors and scientists - some competent and some not-so-competent - in search of a deeper truth about life and love. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Pig Iron's four-man performance is very loosely based on Chekhov's Three Sisters, and Pig Iron pulls from the Russian doctor's stories of social convention and territorial struggle in a decidedly 21st-century update of Chekhov's quest to unravel the absurdities of human behavior.

The remarkable cast represents the core of Pig Iron's arsenal of performers: Pew Fellows in Performance Art Dito van Reigersberg (2002), Quinn Bauriedel (2002), and Geoff Sobelle (2006); and multi-Barrymore Award winning actor and composer James Sugg (also F. Otto Haas Emerging Artist of 2005 and Philadelphia Magazine Best Theater Talent of 2006). Van Reigersberg has recently been making waves as drag-queen-giantess Martha Graham Cracker, and Sobelle returns to Philadelphia from an international tour of the acclaimed all wear bowlers.

Hungarian artist-designer Anna Kiraly, whose innovative design for Pig Iron's installation-bazaar PAY UP was recently featured at the Prague Quadrennial, designs the set. Lighting design is by James Clotfelter (Miro Dance Theatre and Rennie Harris Puremovement). Nick Kourtides (Barrymore Award 2006 for his design of Pig Iron's MISSION TO MERCURY) designed the sound and Olivera Gajic designed the costumes. Laura Schellhardt created the text in collaboration with the cast. Pig Iron Theatre Company co-founder and 2002 Pew Fellow Dan Rothenberg directs CHEKOV LIZARDBRAIN.

Pig Iron Theatre Company, founded in 1995, has rapidly become known as a unique, innovative voice in American theatre and an audience favorite at the Live Arts Festival in their hometown of Philadelphia. Founded in 1995, the ensemble's physical precision, lyrical writing, and exuberant productions have earned them 36 Barrymore Award Nominations in the past 8 years; five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; a Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe; and an OBIE Award, Off-Broadway's highest honor. Pig Iron's work has toured to theaters and festivals in London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, Romania, Germany and Italy. In the fall of 2007, Pig Iron will be the only Philadelphia company to participate in Suzan-Lori Parks's 365 PROJECT at the Joseph Papp Public Theater.

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