Waves of Mu

It's a credit to Amy Caron's current obsession that Waves of Mu is able to tackle the heady neuroscience of mirror neurons in a playful way that won't go over anyone's head. But perhaps it should have: knowing exactly what's going on tends to make the individual demonstrations drag on. What's more, the cloying tone of the play gives out a lot of mixed signals: for instance, during a video interview with V. S. Ramachandran (whose work Caron is expressing through theater), an actor stands to the side, mocking his gesticulations. The art installation is cute, too, with its secretary-cum-thalamus, but this view of the mind doesn't connect with what follows--a multidisciplinary translation of mirror neurons that relies too heavily on video. All that empathy, and yet I often found myself being very self-aware, unable to relate.

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