Theatre & Original Music · Aging — FTD — Alzheimer's Disease
A one-hour stage work in which theatre and original music meet as equal, independent voices — following one man's life across three possible unfoldings.
About the Work
The story follows Mr. K, an elderly man, through three possible versions of the same life: aging, frontotemporal dementia, and Alzheimer's disease, witnessed and narrated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The work explores the fragmentation of time and memory, questioning what is kept in the remaining fragments — what stays when so much gets blurred, eroded, and erased.
Fragments of Memories is an interdisciplinary stage work for two actors and six musicians, combining theatre and music as equal, complementary forms. The theatrical scenes establish context: they show what caregivers and observers see from the outside. The music invites audiences already inside Mr. K's story to move past understanding into recognition.
The same actors, objects, and AI presence return in every version — but it's one small object that carries the throughline most clearly. A worn teddy bear runs through all three, picking up new meaning each time: comfort, obsession, a fragment of his mother. The piece stays close to small, specific moments — the kind that somehow stay with us, leaving us feeling completely at peace, connected, and content. Even when nothing happens and the moment itself seems unimportant, we sometimes keep it anyway, holding onto it as a memory, a milestone worth remembering.
Rehearsal portrait — San Francisco, 2025
A dignified elderly man confronts the quiet fear of becoming invisible and irrelevant, worn — and finds, through an old bear, that worn old things are still loved.
Disinhibition, obsession, and a sudden lack of empathy reshape Mr. K's relationships — while brief moments of awareness flicker through: "as if I've stepped outside my own skin."
Words go missing, time folds in on itself, and the bear merges with a memory of his mother — while a patient AI holds what he can no longer hold himself.
Watch
Original Cut
Turkish Edit — Revised Visual Language
A short scene-by-scene excerpt reel and the post-performance panel discussion are also available on request.
Raising Awareness and Addressing Stigma
The most pervasive form of stigma around dementia is a kind of disappearance: the person recedes, replaced by their diagnosis.
Fragments of Memories refuses that erasure. Mr. K is not a patient — he has memories, humour, attachments, and small but meaningful moments. Dementia is not all that he is.
The work addresses stigma primarily through empathy — the kind that comes from being genuinely moved to witness another person's inner world. The theatrical scenes show what caregivers and observers see from the outside; then the music arrives, translating disinhibition, repetition, and disorientation into something audible and feelable. What was strange becomes human. What was feared becomes felt.
Music holds a particular relationship to dementia: it is one of the last faculties to decline. People who can no longer speak still respond to music — and Mr. K is drawn partly from the composer's own experience as a caregiver. Her father had Alzheimer's disease, and the music became a way to give him a voice after words were gone.
"Look. It's magic." — the bear, passed between two worlds.
Who It's For
Opens a door into the emotional terrain of aging and memory loss — territory most people will face, directly or as witnesses. Public health speaks to this mostly as information; Fragments of Memories makes it visceral.
Where time and resource constraints often limit clinical encounters to a handful of functional words, the work invites professionals into the inner world of the person they treat.
Offers visibility for the quiet weight of caregiving — exhaustion, grief, small impatiences, unexpected tenderness — creating a space where these feelings can exist and be recognised.
Dementia eventually touches almost every family, in every place. The hope is the same wherever it's performed: that it's witnessed as a human story first, not a diagnosis.
From the Stage
Audience Response
"Emotional, empowered and connected."
— S.I., PhD, MPH"I was very moved by Geoff's performance and the music."
— B.L."It was really emotional... the whole concept was mind blowing. Very original, well composed and well presented."
— M.L."It stirred a mix of emotions — sadness, nostalgia, and inspiration — and left me feeling more deeply connected to the lives and stories of others."
— N.K."The shifting time signatures, the repetitive behaviours, and that haunting violin trying so gently to reach him brought back all those moments when I tried to connect with my dad, who had FTD... Are you still in there?"
— D.B., caregiver"It made me question my own aging and my relationship with my kids."
— audience memberFrom a post-performance audience survey, San Francisco premiere, June 2025 (n=26). Quotes shown only from respondents who consented to their feedback being used in future materials.
Origins & Clinical Partnership
Fragments of Memories grew directly out of lived experience.
Composer and writer İdil Özkan cared for her own father as he lived with Alzheimer's disease, and was deeply affected by what she witnessed in him — moments that caught and repeated, a sense of moving between worlds without quite arriving in either. Writing this music became her way of finding a language for what she had witnessed, and of staying connected to her father after words were no longer available to either of them.
The work's clinical depth came through Dr. Kate Rankin and Dr. Bruce Miller at UCSF's Memory and Aging Center, who guided its development from early stages, alongside brainstorming sessions with members of the Rankin Lab. Many informal conversations with caregivers and people living with FTD and Alzheimer's disease shaped the piece further.
AFTD and the Alzheimer's Association joined the post-premiere panel discussion, offering their own perspectives on the work's portrayal of dementia. Separately, the cast and musicians received dementia-care training ahead of rehearsals, so that performance came from understanding rather than imitation.
İdil Özkan is a GBHI Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health and a UCSF Hellman Artist-in-Residence.
About the Creator
İdil Özkan is a composer, pianist, and psychologist working across music, theatre, and public speaking.
She studied piano at the Istanbul State Conservatory, psychology at Boğaziçi University, and film scoring at Berklee College of Music, and completed her master's in contemporary composition at Istanbul Technical University's MIAM. She composes across contemporary classical music and film, and gives seminars and lectures on the relationship between music, emotion, and creativity. She is a GBHI Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health, and was a UCSF Hellman Artist-in-Residence at the Memory and Aging Center for the 2024–2025 term.
Fragments of Memories grew out of her own experience caring for her father through Alzheimer's disease. She wrote, composed, and directed the piece, and is currently developing a larger-scale Turkish production of the work.
İdil Özkan
In Turkey
The piece is being rethought for Turkish audiences, not simply translated.
Dementia is lived differently across cultures — through different family structures, different silences, different expectations placed on caregivers. The Turkish version of Fragments of Memories is taking shape around these differences, developed with guidance from the Alzheimer's Association of Turkey, Ankara branch, and in particular from Prof. Dr. Yavuz Ayhan.
A visual identity system developed in Turkey
Concept visualization, Atatürk Cultural Centre, Istanbul
Credits & Premiere