Amnesia Curiosa
In this contemporary cabinet of curiosities Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford unearth a museum of absence and artifact where the paranormal is normal and the line between docent and exhibit becomes increasingly blurred.
Drawing from the esoteric worlds of pseudo-science, medical anomaly, and spiritualism, Amnesia Curiosa is a surgical séance, exhuming a repository of familial ghosts, memory and wonder.
Amnesia Curiosa was performed atop the historic Pennsylvania Hospital in the oldest surgical amphitheater in the U.S. The show was a collaboration with award-winning physical theatre artist Andrew Dawson (UK). Andrew Dawson studied dance with Merce Cunningham and theatre with Philippe Gaulier and Jacques Lecoq. In his work he combines mime and cinematography techniques together with elements of object theatre.
Production History:
Philadelphia Live Arts Festival - 2006
University of Minneapolis - 2008
Studio Theatre (DC) - 2008
“We, amnesiacs all, condemned to live in an eternally fleeting present, have created the most elaborate of human constructions, memory, to buffer ourselves against the intolerable knowledge of the irreversible passage of time….”
“I keep inside myself, in my private museum, everything I have seen and loved in my life.”
Team:
Created and performed by Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford
Created and directed by Andrew Dawson
Lights: Randy Igleu GLickman
Sound: James Sugg
Set: Luciana Stecconi