MEMORY MACHINE

Written by Francisco Arcila

Directed by Manuel Ortiz

Produced by split/decision

The Tank, NYC

September 27 - October 10, 2026

Memory Machine is a one-man exploration of identity and ultimately the self through the lens of memory. Specifically, through the memory of my brother’s murder in Colombia.

The Memory:

It was July of 2014. I was working at my father’s bicycle shop in Bogotá. I had been there for about a week when one night we got a call that my half-brother, Jhon Manuel, had been shot and killed. The next day I met his mother for the first time and we set out on a wild goose chase through the city’s byzantine bureaucracy in an attempt to find more information and find his body.

When we finally got to the right police station two detectives informed us that they had security cam footage from a nearby store of the whole event. It showed Jhon pulling his motorcycle over into a parking lot just outside the store. He was waiting there for a few minutes when someone with a gun approached him and fired five times. The gunman then grabbed two cellphones that my brother had and took off. Unfortunately, the police had no leads and no arrests were ever made. 

The Machine:

Our entry point into the mechanics and rules of the world. Like the holodeck from Star Trek or Black Mirror’s San Junipero episode, the machine allows its user to create a three dimensional world based on the memories fed into it. Our protagonist uses it to see if he can go back and notice some overlooked clue that might lead to the killer’s identity. As he spends more time in the machine and learns how to use it, he also learns how to abuse it and the associated consequences.

In addition to the fictional machine in the play we hope to draw attention to and play with a second machine and that is the metatheatrical machine of the play itself. While the machine in the play is a work of science fiction, the real world memory machine is a lo-fi one that allows me as the author to re-visit, re-create, and perhaps fabricate elements of my own memory. I invite the audience to join me and play around with their own memories and realize just how precarious our memories and selves really are. 

A first exploration of Memory Machine was presented at Exponential Festival’s Salon Series.