The Blue Mug

Inspired by Oliver Sacks's essay, `The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat', actors in THE BLUE MUG, struggle to construct themselves on the basis of what they remember, bringing up all those moments, both significant and irrelevant, which they salvage from the abyss of forgetting. They present themselves as they are, trying to sift truth from the fiction of their pasts.

Oliver Sacks's essay recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders: people who are afflicted with perceptual and intellectual aberrations, severe memory loss, or those who have been dismissed as retarded, yet are very gifted. This is splendid and sympathetic story telling that enables us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired.

The earlier production was closer to Dr Sacks' explorations. The revived version focusses on the personal memories of its actors, as a way of remembering and seeking meaning from their individual lives.