Unlocking Creativity in Dementia with Jake Broder, Lucy Davenport & Bruce Miller, MD
The Nocturnists
Emily Silverman
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this live panel at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, Emily sits down with playwright Jake Broder, actor Lucy Davenport, and neurologist Bruce Miller to discuss Broder's play UnRavelled, which explores the fascinating relationship between dementia, art, and music.
Find show notes, transcript, and more at thenocturnists.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for the Nocturnist comes from the California Medical Association. |
| 0:04.4 | At the Nocturnist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws. |
| 0:09.1 | Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. |
| 0:12.6 | All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer. |
| 0:28.2 | You're listening to The Nocturnous Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman. |
| 0:35.9 | One of my favorite places at UCSF is the Memory and Aging Center. They do amazing, internationally renowned biomedical research, but they also have a thriving |
| 0:39.4 | artistic community, including a Hellman Artist in Residence program, which I was lucky enough to |
| 0:44.5 | participate in in 2020, and the Global Brain Health Institute Fellowship, which brings in people |
| 0:50.3 | from all over the world to create art inspired by neuroscience. I have to admit, I feel like |
| 0:56.9 | I have found a bit of family at the Mac, which brings me to today's episode, featuring the |
| 1:02.0 | 2019 Helmin Artist in Residence, playwright, actor, and producer Jake Broder. You may have seen Jake |
| 1:09.2 | on TV shows like Silicon Valley, the morning show, the patient, |
| 1:13.2 | but he also has deep roots in the theater. He wrote a play, Our American Hamlet, which premiered |
| 1:19.7 | at the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and was nominated for Best New Play by the Independent |
| 1:23.5 | Reviewers of Boston. He wrote a musical, Miravelle, which won the LA Drama Critics |
| 1:28.6 | Circle Award for Best Score. He's written for TV. He's a musician who trained at the Guild |
| 1:33.6 | Hall School of Music and Drama in London. The list goes on and on. Jake came to UCSF to write |
| 1:41.1 | a play about Anne Adams, a brilliant biologist who got sick with a type of |
| 1:45.6 | dementia called Primary Progressive Aphasia, or PPA, and after she got sick, started painting |
| 1:52.1 | prolifically, even though she had virtually no artistic background. |
| 1:57.6 | Anne's most famous painting is a visual representation of a musical piece, Bolero, that repetitive piece of music that was composed by late 19th and early 20th century composer Maurice Ravel. |
| 2:10.6 | Interestingly, Ravel too was thought to have suffered from PPA. |
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