Project achieved within the programme Open Doors to Everyone

To what extent can the brain determine our level of intelligence, memory, behaviour, affectivity? Who are we and what makes us who we are? For those interested in the depths of the human brain, but also in our deeper ignorance, the Bucharest National Theatre presents the show Incognito by Nick Payne (a project within the "Open Doors for All" Programme).

One of the most famous young English playwrights and screenwriters, Nick Payne is equally passionate about science, the press nicknaming the playwright "Mr. Science ". After the international success with the play "Constellations", whose main character was quantum mechanics, in Incognito, the protagonist, a very fickle and unpredictable one, is the human brain. Made up of several interwoven episodes, like multiple universes in a non-linear evolution, Incognito presents three stories, two of them inspired by real facts. The first talks about the theft of Albert Einstein's brain, the second presents the case of a pianist who, following an experimental brain operation, loses his short-term memory; the third, fictional, focuses on Martha, a neuropsychologist, who tries to know herself while probing the minds of her patients.

Under the direction of director Zsuzsanna Kovacs and in the scenography of Corina Boboc, Monica Davidescu, Aylin Cadîr, Ovidiu Cuncea and Lari Giorgescu achieve an extraordinary acting performance, playing over 20 parts, passing intelligently from one character to another, in an imaginary journey through the labyrinth of the human brain. Because, in Einstein’s words, “imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited." 

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu