"Citizen Brain" Live Onstage ... At Last!

Use code PREFRONTAL for half-price tickets to the first two shows.

Poster art by the great R. Black.

Three years after COVID forced the premiere of my latest monologue, Citizen Brain, off the stage and into a truncated run on Zoom, I’m finally getting to perform it live in a theater — The Marsh in Berkeley. I’ll be there on Saturdays at 5 p.m. from June 10 through July 29, and oh, if you happen to be in the Bay Area, it would be so lovely to see you there! You can use the code PREFRONTAL for half-price tickets ($12.50) for the performances on June 10 and 17. Tix & info here.

In the fall of 2016, through mysterious and miraculous circumstances, I — a guy who had flunked every science class he took at college — somehow became a fellow at the newly formed Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), based at UCSF. This was at a time when our political world and my personal world were both in tumult: Donald Trump had just been elected president, and my dear stepfather, Frank Rosen, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. I’d hoped that this fellowship would teach me ways to help my mom care for Frank — and it did. But unexpectedly, studying brain science also gave me an insight into our national situation as well: America, I realized, was suffering from a kind of political dementia.

Early on in my fellowship, I learned that neuroscientists had identified an “empathy circuit” in the brain — and that this circuit could actually be strengthened through practice. Which is what led me to burst into the office of my mentor, GBHI co-founder Dr. Bruce Miller, and announce: “I want to spark a peaceful worldwide revolution of empathy!”

Graphic by Rich Prahm of Idle Hands Studio.

Citizen Brain is about my quest to save the world using brain science, while at the same time helping Mom and Frank deal with the progression of Frank’s devastating disease. It’s a show about the healing power of empathy amid personal and political calamity. I am jazzed beyond belief that I’ll finally be getting a chance to perform it live in a theater.

Again, for tix and info, click here — and if you’ll be going to the show on June 10 or 17, make sure to use the code PREFRONTAL for half-price tickets.