Review of Citizen Brain
Running Oct 16 – Nov 8th
Josh Kornbluth is a monologist who has been performing comedic autobiographical stories in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond for about 30 years. His one-person shows include Andy Warhol: Good for Jews, Ben Franklin: Unplugged and Reports from the Zen Hospice Project. Some of his solo plays have also been made into films including Haiku Tunnel, Red Diaper Baby, and Love and Taxes.
Kornbluth’s latest show, Citizen Brain, is well suited for the virtual world of YouTube Theatre because Kornbluth is skilled at one-person shows. We as the audience get to chat along with the show as it unfolds as well, giving a sense of community connection as we join from around the globe.
Citizen Brain documents Kornbluth’s experience as an artist-in-residence at the Global Brain Health Institute at the University of California, San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center (MAC). During this time, work mirrors life as he attempts to provide caregiving at a distance for his mother and his stepfather.
One of the most memorable parts of Citizen Brain is Kornbluth’s retelling of how he secured his fellowship at MAC. He interviews for the position over the newfangled technology of Zoom while he constantly refreshes the results map in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. As Kornbluth watches Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio turn red, he silently cries inside while making his interviewer literally cry by telling him about his stepfather’s diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia.
Kornbluth’s journey with MAC and his relationship with his stepfather and mother collide with his own political tensions as he tries to figure out what to do for a fellowship project. He learns from neuroscientists that there is an empathy circuit, which degrades during dementia. Inspired by this information, Kornbluth begins work on an empathy project and comes up with the term “Citizen Brain” to describe “the collective mind that powers society.” Looking at the current political climate, Kornbluth posits “Could it be that our country has dementia?”
While Citizen Brain is couched in comedic moments (i.e. “What communist is named Carl with a “C”?”) and political didacticism, many viewers will appreciate the very human story within this tragicomedy. Kornbluth weaves the courtship story of his mother who finally found love at 70 after years of being on her own. Kornbluth tells the audience that his mother gave up a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan to move to Chicago. Sadly this romance was not meant to last and Kornbluth maps his stepfather’s decline as their apartment overlooking Lake Michigan becomes cluttered and dirty and they are unable to continue living independently.
The couple’s story is so compelling that Kornbluth could have done his entire show on his mother and stepfather. However, he chooses to broaden the scope and we get a complex story about community, family, neuroscience, and Citizen Brain that challenges our perceptions of aging and empathy.
Citizen Brain runs through November 8, 2020. To reserve tickets and receive a link to the production visit the Shotgun Players
For Kornbluth’s videos on aging, brain science, and social justice visit: https://www.citizenbrain.org/