Join SCPL and Brock University each month for an engaging and often revelatory dive into history, culture, or the arts. Each month features a different lecture from a Brock University professor.

For many who are suffering from a brain injury the symptoms are often invisible and, as a result, hard for others to understand, frequently creating a long and lonely journey from event to recovery. In his Brock talk, Mike Griffin will address the pre-production research and development of The Mysterious Mind of Molly McGillicuddy, a play that explores brain injury and related mental health issues through the styles of full-mask and physical theatre. Through this research, Mike examines the intersection of the medical and the theatrical, investigating the dramatization of the internal experience. How can something personal and invisible be staged in a visceral, imagistic, and/or sensory way, bringing the audience into the mind and experience of the individual? Using physical theatre and full-mask to approach these areas of inquiry opens the doors into a world of imagination, heightening the everyday, embracing the expressionistic, and exploring the whimsical. In his presentation, Mike will share his process as he interacts with this research in foundational, inspirational, and practical ways to support the creation of this new play.

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Mike Griffin has worked across Canada as a theatre educator, director, and playwright. He currently teaches acting, directing, devising, movement, mask and Commedia dell’Arte in the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University, where he has been for the last eight years. Mike also regularly directs productions within DART’s Mainstage season, and has worked with numerous theatre companies as a professional artist including Bard on the Beach, Theatre Calgary, Vertigo Mystery Theatre, and The Shakespeare Company. His work is published in The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’Arte with a chapter on the rival playwrights Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi, and he has written and/or adapted four Commedia plays, including Pantalone’s Palace.

This event has been co-organized by the Humanities Research Institute and The Centre for Canadian Studies.