idea

The Memory Idea

A building came to existence to host one man’s brain. An ordinary man who was run over by a bike when he was 7.  For year he was known only as HM. Scientists in this building called the Brain Observatory, have preserved his brain meticulously; they hope that what is written stays and that one day the programme will exist that can read what is written in this brain. Henry is long gone but, non omnis moriar; not all of him has died and maybe one day...

Our play is in that building. Our audience are the guests and guinea pigs. They are to undergo experiments, visit the memory museum, share, create and revisit memories.

What kind of utopia / corporation  is this? Scientists, librarians, data inputters, volunteers, student doctors, inmates? Their search is to find how memory works.

There are rooms where activities happen. Some of the activities seem odd but we explain them convincingly and scientifically. There are tests, lectures, tributes to the man, displays of the brain that began it all. The mirror test takes place in one room, actors are tested on their memory motor skills, flashbulb memories are tested; some of this is very common sensical; some of it is bizarre.

There is a labyrinth where audience leave memory notes.

Maybe they bring something?

There is a dusty old library full of memory memorabilia. Museum displays of how memories used to be collected pre and post computers. There are experiments that try to visually project lost memories.

The audience choose 1 of three things; visit the comeback man, leave a message, create a memory

They walk past the old man who tries to fit in all the memories in the box, to tidy up, to not lose, to organise and remember who he is.

They wonder about the man who build the building, who took the brain, who build his whole life around finding the lost Henry. Is there something strange going on here?

and can science explain all of memory? or is it something more, beyond something that language and science  must pass over in silence?

Maybe there are bubbles and when they accidentally break, the memories come out: and big theatrical musical numbers. Fragments of song, half forgotten words, colours and misremembered harsh looks.

In one room, a patient tries to recreate the costume of his lost wife. But they don’t seem to get it right.

What disclaimer do the audience have to sign? Agree to have their short memory erased? Order a new memory?  Order a dvd of their memories? A memory voucher? Can they scan a memory code in their i phones? Donate their brains? Agree to remember a word that we tell them and to tell it back to us later, much later? Did they give away something they didn’t mean to?

And what, will they remember of their visit when we ask them?