The Marsh Berkeley Extends CITIZEN BRAIN Written and Performed by Josh Kornbluth

Due to popular demand, The Marsh Berkeley has extended Josh Kornbluth’s engaging and enlightening autobiographical monologue Citizen Brain, told in Kornbluth’s inimitable humorous, intelligent, and forthright style. Inspired to provide a helping hand, Kornbluth began to immerse himself in the study of brain disease at the Global Brain Health Institute. As he investigated whether or not society was suffering from political dementia, Kornbluth came across the discovery of the “empathy circuit” in the brain, which may be the ultimate cure to uniting divided groups and solving the world’s problems. Can a neurotic storyteller who flunked every science class spark a science-based revolution of empathy? 

Citizen Brain received its live theatrical premiere at The Marsh Berkeley in June 2023, with Theatrius calling the work an “irresistible comedy,” and Bay City News giving it a “Best Bet” sharing, “The Bay Area is blessed with a goodly number of divine monologists, and one of the best of the bunch is the humorous and insightful storyteller Josh Kornbluth.” Currently running through July 29, Citizen Brain will now extend August 5–26, 2023 with performances at 5:00pm Saturdays at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. For tickets ($25-$35 sliding scale, $50 and $100 reserved) or more information, the public may visit www.themarsh.org.

 

ABOUT Josh Kornbluth

Josh Kornbluth is a mainstay at The Marsh who has developed and premiered his lauded works there for decades, with his performance of Haiku Tunnel being The Marsh’s first-ever full-length production. For over three decades Kornbluth has been performing his autobiographical monologues for theater audiences all over the U.S., and in other countries as well. He launched his career as a solo artist with Josh Kornbluth’s Daily World, in which he described his childhood as the son of communists in 1960s New York. Thanks to a sponsorship by the U.S. State Department, Kornbluth’s monologue, Citizen Josh, toured throughout India. Other works include Red Diaper Baby (Drama Desk Award nomination), The Mathematics of Change, Ben Franklin: Unplugged, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe production of Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan, among many others. For two years he hosted a television interview program, “The Josh Kornbluth Show,” on KQED . He has collaborated with his brother Jacob on two nationally distributed feature films: Love & Taxes, which received a 100% “Fresh” rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and Haiku Tunnel, which was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. Kornbluth has appeared in several other movies including concert films of Red Diaper Baby and The Mathematics of Change; Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Teknolust and Strange Culture, a documentary about artist and professor Steve Kurtz; and Francis Ford Coppola’s Jack, starring Robin Williams. His shows have been collected into a book, Red Diaper Baby: Three Comic Monologues, as well as two audiobooks from Audible, Red Diaper Baby: Three Comic Monologues and Ben Franklin: Unplugged … and Other Comic Monologues. He has taught a course in autobiographical storytelling at Stanford University. Kornbluth was an artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco as well as a Hellman Visiting Artist at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center. Since January 2017, Kornbluth has been an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, where he produces the Citizen Brain series of online videos that addresses issues including brain health, loneliness, empathy, and ageism. He also writes an online newsletter, But Not Enough About Me.

 

ABOUT Casey Stangl

Casey Stangl is an award-winning director based in Los Angeles. Recent projects include A Few Good Men at La Mirada Theatre , Steel Magnolias at Everyman Theater in Baltimore, and a workshop of Anna Ziegler’s Antigones for the Foundry Project. Stangl creates script adaptation and directs foreign language dubbing for Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Disney. She was named 2019 Director of the Year by StageScene Los Angeles. Stangl’s work has been seen at theaters across the country including South Coast Repertory, American Conservatory Theater, Guthrie Theater, Arizona Theatre Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Jungle Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Portland Stage, and Cleveland Playhouse. From 2015 to 2022 Stangl was Associate Artistic Director for Ojai Playwrights Conference, and she has developed new plays at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Humana Festival, Pacific Playwrights Festival, PlayPenn, and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor. She proudly serves on the Executive Board of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), the national labor union for stage directors and choreographers. 

 

ABOUT THE GLOBAL BRAIN HEALTH INSTITUTE (GBHI): 
 

The Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) is a leader in the global community dedicated to protecting the world’s aging populations from threats to brain health. GBHI works to reduce the scale and impact of dementia in three ways: by training and connecting the next generation of leaders in brain health through the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health program; by collaborating in expanding preventions and interventions; and by sharing knowledge and engaging in advocacy. The Atlantic Fellows program is built on the idea that achieving fairer, healthier, more inclusive societies requires leaders with diverse perspectives to collaborate on solutions and learn from one another. The Atlantic Institute connects the seven Atlantic Fellows programs, building a global community of courageous leaders who inspire positive change.

ABOUT THE MARSH

The Marsh is known as “a breeding ground for new performance.” It was launched in 1989 by Founder and Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman, and pre-COVID hosted more than 600 performances of 175 shows across the company’s two venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. A leading outlet for solo performers, The Marsh’s specialty has been hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “solo performances that celebrate the power of storytelling at its simplest and purest.” The East Bay Times named The Marsh one of Bay Area’s best intimate theaters, calling it “one of the most thriving solo theaters in the nation. The live theatrical energy is simply irresistible.” Since its launch in April 2020, the theatre’s digital platform MarshStream has garnered more than 100,000 viewers. Notable MarshStream moments include the debut of MarshStream International Solo Fest 1 and 2, The Marsh’s first-ever digital festivals, and the U.S. premiere of The Invisible Line, a new documentary about one of the world’s most famous social experiments gone wrong. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic MarshStream has hosted over 700 live streams, providing some 300 performers a platform to continue developing and producing art. The Marsh will continue to offer digital content on MarshStream, as well as in- person performances. 

 

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