Theater production 'Olivia' dramatizes dementia while revealing prevention strategies

On a Thursday evening at San Abasto Subterráneo Cultural in Buenos Aires, the lights came up on a stage that had been transformed into the fractured mind of a woman named Olivia. The play, directed by José Luis Arias, did not follow a conventional timeline. Instead, it moved through her memories in the way memory actually fails—in fragments, in loops, in sudden clarity followed by fog. Olivia was losing her independence, losing the ability to navigate the world without help. The audience watched as she moved through scenes that layered broken recollections with perfectly recited verses from world literature, a visual representation of a mind where some things remain crystalline while others dissolve entirely.

The production was part of the tenth anniversary celebration of the Global Brain Health Institute, an organization founded in 2015 with offices at the University of California, San Francisco and Trinity College Dublin. What made this evening different from a typical theater outing was what came after the final curtain. The cast stepped aside and a panel of neuropsychologists took the stage. Lucía Crivelli, a researcher at CONICET and head of neuropsychology at FLENI, sat alongside Adolfo García, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of San Andrés. They had come to translate what the audience had just witnessed into clinical language, to explain what dementia actually is and, more importantly, what can be done to prevent it.

The conversation began with a fundamental distinction. Dementia is not normal aging. It is not something that simply happens to people as they grow older. García explained that dementia is a collection of syndromes that typically emerge after age 60 or 65, but the defining feature is not isolated forgetfulness—it is the loss of the ability to function independently. A person might forget where they put their keys. A person with dementia cannot manage their money, cannot find their way home, cannot communicate their needs. The deterioration is systematic, progressive, and it strips away autonomy.

Crivelli added a crucial piece of data that reframed the entire conversation. In Argentina, research shows that up to 60 percent of dementia cases are preventable. In high-income countries, that figure drops to 45 percent. The difference matters because it suggests that the risk factors driving dementia in Argentina—factors like low educational attainment, untreated depression, uncompensated hearing loss, and cardiovascular disease—are conditions that can be addressed. Prevention, Crivelli said, is not something that begins when symptoms appear. It begins in youth and continues throughout life. She outlined five pillars: cardiovascular health, physical exercise, intellectual activity, proper nutrition, and active social engagement. Controlling high blood pressure, managing weight, staying mentally stimulated, eating well, and maintaining relationships are not luxuries. They are defenses against cognitive decline.

The play itself had captured something that the clinical discussion could only approximate: the experience of living inside this deterioration. Dani Macri, who played Olivia's son and also produced the work, shared a personal memory. When he was 22, he had accompanied his grandfather through dementia. While his grandfather's recent memory had failed, something strange persisted. When Macri played the piano, his grandfather could still correct him on the tangos he remembered from decades earlier. Crivelli seized on this paradox. The brain can hold onto semantic memory—general knowledge, cultural references, the ability to recite poetry—while losing the ability to remember what happened yesterday. She cited Tony Bennett, who could perform an entire concert from memory but wake the next morning with no recollection of having done so.

What emerged from the evening was a portrait of dementia that extended far beyond the person diagnosed. Crivelli emphasized that the play also depicted what clinicians call caregiver burden syndrome. Two out of every three people with dementia are women. Two out of every three caregivers are women. The disease does not simply affect the patient; it reorganizes family relationships, distributes care work unequally, and creates conflict within households. The play inverted this pattern somewhat by centering a male caregiver, but the weight of the burden remained visible on stage.

Arias, the director, had made a deliberate choice to introduce humor into material that could easily have become unbearable. He had spent time with his own grandfather during the final year of the man's life with Alzheimer's and had noticed that even in the depths of the disease, involuntary humor persisted—in the confusions, in the misunderstandings, in the small absurdities that emerge when the mind misfires. Rather than laughing at tragedy, the production tried to capture the humor that was already there. Arias suggested that this approach might change how people interact with relatives who are ill. Many visitors arrive heavy with the weight of the situation, he said. Sometimes what is needed is a joke.

The evening demonstrated something that the Global Brain Health Institute has been working toward: a bridge between disciplines. The play was developed in collaboration with neuroscientists and clinicians. The panel after the performance brought art and medicine into direct conversation. The goal is not simply to educate but to transform how communities understand brain health and dementia prevention. Crivelli closed the discussion by describing a consultation she had conducted that same morning—three adult children sitting with their mother, some treating her as though she had no illness while others insisted on the reality of her diagnosis. The family was caught between denial and acceptance, unable to find solid ground. She had watched the play that evening and recognized in it something true about that morning's encounter. Theater, it turned out, could hold that truth in a way that clinical language alone could not.