The lions face
By Mike Ashworth | March 1, 2010
I attended an amazing event on Saturday evening at the Corn Exchange in Brighton titled The Lions Face symposium.
This event was a preview of an opera which is going on tour soon and in addition a presentation and opportunity for the audience to ask questions of the creators.
There was one very different thing about this Opera. It is the first to have been created about Alzheimer’s.
Usually there are only two narratives associated with Alzheimer’s. One is that it is a terrible disease that robs a person of their self. The other that some incredible science is taking place which will eventually provide cures for this disease. The third narrative which is less observed are the stories of people, individuals, couples who are dealing with this disease on a day-to-day basis.
The Lion’s face explores the social, emotional and physical impacts of Alzheimer’s disease. Composer Elena Langer and Poet Glyn Maxwell have developed this opera through a collaborative research phase with Professor Simon Lovestone and his team at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King’s College, London.
The Opera takes a typical care home, which is usually a closed environment, in that it contains patients and people treating the patient, and their families and injects a 13 year old girl into the equation.
Like Alice (from Alice in wonderland) she has rampaging curiosity about the patients of this care home and this is what takes place on the stage.
One of the things I discovered, and this is covered in the opera is a condition called agnosia. This is quite common with Alzheimer’s and it is where you fail to recognise objects you were once familiar with.
Imagine right now, a stranger stood in front of you, putting your shirt or blouse on for you. you’d be perhaps angry, terrified, annoyed?
Take this to another level and you have something called autoprosopagnosia. This is where you fail to recognise your own face.
Could you imagine that, looking in the mirror and seeing a face that you do not recognise. I’d find this frightening I think.
My father died from Alzheimers a number of years ago, when in his 60’s however we need to stop thinking about this disease as being a disease of old people only.
I read a story recently of a guy who had been diagnosed with Alzheimers at the age of 36. And in another story a boy of just 7 who had been diagnosed with a particular form of dementia.
Their was encouraging news about drug trials. 10 drugs are currently in Phase III of trials. Typically 90% of these do not make it to production. This means that one of these drugs may make-it however if they don’t there are 25 drugs in Phase III trials at present.
The opera will premiere at the Brighton Festival in May and then go on to tour some of the UK’s leading music and theatre venues.
Topics: Arts and Entertainment, Health |
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1:05 pm on March 1st, 2010
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by mikeashworth: a wonderful event i attended on saturday in #brighton as part of the science festival http://bit.ly/94CogG #alzheimers #dementia…