Katt Lissard / memory lab

September 8-29, 2008

3B Development Series

Script Development Workshop

Excavation follows two daughters, each searching for fathers who have lost themselves by losing part of their minds – one, through a bizarre railroad accident in 1848; the other, through the disintegration of dementia. The play jumps back and forth, between America in the mid-1800s and corporate corridors and science labs of today – visiting the 19th century’s fascination with phrenology and the current burgeoning field of neurotheology along the way.

The play’s genesis is the case of Phineas Gage, which launched modern neurology. In 1848, Gage, the foreman of a railroad crew, was in a freak accident which left him alive but missing a chunk of the pre-frontal lobe area of his brain, transforming his personality completely. Gage’s accident serves as both backdrop and framework for the present-day chronicle of the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Excavation‘s two daughters search for fathers in worlds as unique and enigmatic as the Barnum Museum itself, where Phineas Gage once did a stint in the Hall of Curiosities as “The Only Living Man With a Hole Clean Through His Head.”

Resident Artist

Katt Lissard was just named one of 4 invited artists for Mabou Mines’ 2009 Resident Artist Progam (RAP). For RAP she’ll be creating a performance piece, Outpost, to be performed in May 2009. In July, 2008, Katt completed the second session of the Winter/Summer Institute in Theatre for Development (WSI) in Lesotho, southern Africa, of which she is Artistic Director (www.maketheatre.org). Katt spent most of 2005 in Lesotho on a Fulbright – teaching in the National University’s Theatre Unit, producing and directing plays, and researching the dramatic/theatrical response in sub-Saharan Africa to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As a direct outgrowth of her work, the Winter/Summer Institute was launched in June of 2006. WSI brings performers and directors, students and teachers, together from four countries to create collaborative theatre in response to the HIV crisis. Awarded a 2008 Lanesboro Residency – a Jerome Foundation grant via Cornucopia Art Center in Lanesboro, Minnesota – she created an environmental installation piece with flood survivors and environmental activists in the Root River Valley. Katt is a 2007 recipient of an Art Matters individual artist grant for her ongoing theatre work in Africa. She is a two-time MacDowell Colony Fellow. Katt is on the faculty of the Individualized Masters program at Goddard College. She’s also a visiting writer in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Long Island University, Brooklyn and is a frequent instructor and project collaborator at the State University of New York’s Empire State College in Manhattan.