Talk-In-The-Box Events for Yesterday Happened: Remembering H.M.

Saturday, April 14 7:00 - 7:40 p.m. before 8:00 p.m. performance
Saturday Symposium: "The Legacy of H.M.: Memory and Research"
H.M.’s case greatly illuminated the field of Neuroscience and memory research.
What did his condition teach us about how our memory works, and where can we see the impact and the legacy of H.M. in science today?
Special Guests: John D. E. Gabrieli, Grover Hermann Professor, Health Sciences, Technology, and Cognitive Neuroscience, MIT; and Philip Hilts, Director, Knight Science Journalism Fellowships, MIT, author of Memory's Ghost - The Nature of Memory and the Strange Tale of Mr. M.

Sunday, April 15, following 2:00 p.m. performance
Sunday Soiree
Congratulate the cast at a complimentary post-show reception!

Wednesday, April 18, following 7:30 pm performance
Central Conversations
Tonight’s performance is followed by a conversation with CST staff, artists, audiences, and Cambridge-area organizations, focusing on intersections between stories on our stage and stories in our community.
Special Guests: Kaloyan S. Tanev, MD, Director of Clinical Neuropsychiatry Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a physician in the MGH/Red Sox Foundation Home Base Program, dedicated to improving the lives of veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan living with deployment- or combat-related stress and/or traumatic brain injury. Sarah Boyer, Oral History Project coordinator, Cambridge Historical Commission, who interviews the people of Cambridge about their memories of the neighborhoods they lived in and cared for during the last century. Ildiko Szabo, Director of Community Life, Youville House in Cambridge.

Thursday, April 19, following 7:30 p.m. performance
Artists and Audiences
Join the cast and director in a post-performance talkback!
Special Guests: Cast and director of Yesterday Happened: Remembering H.M.

Saturday, April 21, 7:00 - 7:40 p.m., before 8:00 p.m. show
Saturday Symposium: "The Legacy of H.M.: Memory and Research"
H.M.’s case greatly illuminated the field of Neuroscience and memory research.
What did his condition teach us about how our memory works, and where can we see the impact and the legacy of H.M. in science today?
Special Guests: Howard Eichenbaum, Professor of Cognitive Neurobiology at Boston University. He is also the director of the Center for Memory and The Brain, the Center for Neuroscience, and of the Cognitive Neurobiology Laboratory. His primary focus is on the hippocampus, the portion of HM’s brain that was removed in his surgery.

Wednesday, April 25, following 7:30 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special Guest: Sarah Gumlak, Research Dramaturg for Yesterday Happened: Remembering H.M.

Thursday, April 26, following 7:30 p.m. performance
Scholar Social
Special Guest: Suzanne Corkin, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and Head of the Behavioral Neuroscience Lab. Her research focuses on the biological bases of human memory networks, cognitive and neural characteristics of healthy aging, and natural history and pathophysiology of degenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. She studied H.M. from 1962 until his death in 2008.

Friday, April 27, following 8:00 p.m. performance
"Adapting HM’s Story for the Stage"
Join Wes Savick and Tod Machover, the Director/Playwright and the Composer of Yesterday Happened: Remembering H.M., for a post-show conversation about their journey bringing H.M.’s story to the stage.

Saturday, April 28, 1:30 – 2:45 p.m., before 3:00 p.m. performance
Plays on Memory - Short plays by MIT student playwrights
Special Guest: Playwright Alan Brody, Professor of Theater, MIT. Playwrights: Stephen Giandomenico, Sarah Gumlak, Christopher Smith, and Mark Velednitsky, all MIT students or graduates in the sciences.

Saturday, April 28, 7:00 p.m., before 8:00 p.m. performance
Saturday Symposium: "The Fine Art of Remembering: Memory and Representation"
Scenes from a new play exploring aging and memory, Mag and Me, by Deborah Lake Fortson will be performed and responded to by a scientist who studies changes in memory as a function of age. How can artists help us understand what memory is and how it works?
Special Guests: Deborah Lake Fortson, playwright, and Dr. Ayanna Kim Thomas, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Tufts, whose research explores memory accuracy and information retrieval.

Sunday, April 29, following 2:00 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special Guest: Nehassaiu deGannes, poet and performer, whose original works often take memory as a central subject. Most recently her poetry collection “Undressing the River” won the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize and was published in 2011.

Wednesday, May 2, following 7:30 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special guest: Elizabeth Kensinger, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and the Director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at Boston College. Her research interests center on the effects of emotion on memory and how we remember. While a graduate student at MIT, mentored by Dr. Suzanne Corkin, she had the opportunity to work with H.M.

Thursday, May 3, following 7:30 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special Guest: Robin Abrahams, author, research psychologist, Underground Railway Theater Board member, and particularly well known as the Boston Globe columnist - Miss Conduct.

Friday, May 4, following 8:00 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special Guest: Dr. Li-Huei Tsai, Professor and Director - Picower Institute for Learning and Memory; Investigator - Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Senior Associate Member, Broad Institute. Her work focuses on the pathogenic mechanisms underlying neurological disorders affecting learning and memory, such as autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and Schizophrenia.

Saturday, May 5, following 3:00 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special Guests: Dorothy and Aaron Jungels, Founders and co-Artistic Directors of Everett, a cross-disciplinary, cross-generational, and cross-cultural ensemble of dance and theater artists in Providence, RI. Everett's current work, "Brain Storm," combines neuroscience and narrative to illuminate the beauty and mystery of the brain.

Saturday, May 5 7:00 – 7:40 p.m., before 8:00 p.m. performance
Saturday Symposium: "Fabrication Of Things Past: Memory and Truth"
H.M. was unable to recall what he said or did moments before. But what about the rest of us -- are our memories really as accurate as we think they are?
Special Guest: Daniel Schacter, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and director of the Schacter Memory Lab at Harvard. Dr. Schacter’s books on memory and cognition include: The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, and Searching for Memory: The Brain, The Mind, and The Past.

Sunday, May 6, following 2:00 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special Guest: Angela Gutchess, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Brandeis University. Her expertise is in how age and culture affect memory and social cognition.

Friday, May 11, 6:30 – 7:40, before 8 pm performance
A Central Square Theater Science Café
Special Guest: Suzanne Corkin, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and Head of the Behavioral Neuroscience Lab. Her research focuses on the biological bases of human memory networks, cognitive and neural characteristics of healthy aging, and natural history and pathophysiology of degenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. She studied H.M. from 1962 until his death in 2008 and is coming out with a new book this fall: Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H.M.

Saturday, May 12, 7:00 - 7:40 p.m., before 8:00 p.m. performance
Saturday Symposium: "The Stranger in the Mirror: Memory and Identity"
Scientists have differing perspectives on whether H.M.’s sense of self disappeared with his ability to form new memories. Are we still ourselves without our memories?
Special Guest: Tomaso Poggio, Eugene McDermott Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Sunday, May 13, following 2:00 p.m. performance
Post-Performance Conversation
Special Guests: Stephen Salloway, MD, MS, Director of Neurology and the Memory and Aging Program at Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Psychiatry at Brown Medical School. Dr. Salloway lectures widely on dementia and he is a leading proponent of the early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease.