A long time ago, I was lucky enough to work for several years with the amazing Matthew Maguire and the equally fantastic Susan Mosakowski, the artistic directors of the Creation Production Company, based in SoHo. (Matthew is currently the Theatre Program Director/Head of Acting Program at Fordham University.) The work we did was very conceptual in nature and not commercial or what most people would consider conventional, but it was the best work and the best time I had in twenty-three years working in the theatre.

 

The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo is the journey of one man trying to remember an event in twenty-one lines across twenty-one scenes. First staged at La Mama E.T.C., it was remounted in an astounding production inside the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, a space with soaring vaulted ceilings and eight large chambers with rough stone and brick walls. I played three parts, the Beast in Giulio's memory, Alessandro, and Arlecchino in a Comedia del'arte troupe that cavorted through Giulio's mind.

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Giulio Camillo, a historical figure, was extremely famous during the renaissance for his Theatre of Memory, a system for remembering things that entailed putting objects and/or images near drawers or cubby holes containing books or scrolls or pages of information. Associating the image with the information allowed one to remember the data by recalling the image. There’s a ton of information on him online for anyone interested.