A real-life contemporary biography may seem like an unusual presentation for a company devoted to children’s theater, but then the subject of Charles Way’s “Playing From the Heart,” which is receiving its United States premiere at Imagination Stage, is equally unusual: Musician Dame Evelyn Glennie, who despite being deaf is one of the world’s foremost percussionists.

The play begins with Evelyn (Erica Siegel) at age 8, a young, headstrong tomboy growing up on a farm in Scotland with her parents (Eric Messner and Misty Demory) and her brothers Colin (Joe Brack) and Roger (Rex Daugherty). What seems like a series of earaches turns out to be the beginning of her hearing loss. A few years later, she is diagnosed as being “profoundly deaf.”