Andreas Liebmann

My Prehistoric Brain

Speech tomography for a massless organ

Commissioned work for the Theater Freiburg

4 performers, 2 musicians

“Meier is a brain researcher. he knows everything about his disease and some things about his mind. meier has spent 40 years examining brains, holding them in his hands, cutting them open, taking pictures, disposing of them. meier knows about the brain, loves it and hates it. he dreams about the brain and wants to forget it. meier is becoming more and more helpless. his brain doesn’t do what meier wants. his body doesn’t do what meier wants. his colleagues don’t do what meier wants, the world doesn’t do what meier wants. meier will die, meier will disintegrate, and what meier remains: to observe his disintegration, to think about his disintegration, to communicate his disintegration. we will tell you about it.”

From a one-year encounter with a seriously ill neurologist, director and author Andreas Liebmann develops an evening for four actors and two musicians.

“The resulting text is a strong piece of literature about the relationship between man and his brain. The height of the fall is marked by the sentence that evolution has overwhelmed man with his brain, and that the brain is not designed to live as long as apparatus medicine makes it possible. The result will be a planet of dementia.”(nachtkritik)

You can listen to the radio play here

World premiere 9.10.2010 | Theater Freiburg
Direction Andreas Liebmann

World premiere 9.10.2010 | Theater Freiburg
Direction Andreas Liebmann

First broadcast WDR: 12.2.2017

Order piece

DU-Swiss Journal of Culture, “Our brain – the riddle is the solution

The brain as a project