Producing Artistic Director

Giulio Cesare Perrone is a playwright, set and costume designer as well as a stage director. He began his career in his native Italy where he directed and designed mainly for the theatre. Since his arrival in the United States in 1995, he has directed and designed for both the theatre and opera. He was the recipient of a 2000 Pew National Artists Residency grant with Dell’Arte International for his adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Giulio wrote, designed and directed two fully staged fragments of Paradise Lost before completing the third, and final, production in March 2002. Paradise Lost: The Clone of God went on tour in May 2002 to Croatia and Hungary. He has since received a 2002 Pew-Theatre Communications Group grant for his adaptation of The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova.

Giulio graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti “Brera” in Milan in 1988, designing 28 productions for Italy’s most important festivals, resident andtouring companies as well as directing Mourning Becomes Electra, Pentesilea and Andre’s Mother before moving to the United States in 1995. His American design debut was the Laguna Playhouse production of Goldoni’s The Liar, for which he won a Drama-Logue award.

Now a US resident, Giulio has over 200 theatre and opera productions to his credit. He has worked for theatres and opera companies including the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the Alley Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Festival Opera, Dell’Arte International, the ACT Academy, Opera San Jose, Foghouse Productions, California Shakespeare Festival, TheatreWorks, A Travelling Jewish Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, and the Magic Theatre.

Founding Company Member

Michael McCamish grew up in the beauty of the Tennessee Valley and Cumberland Mountain range on Signal Mountain in Chattanooga, TN. He moved to the Bay Area in 1997 and completed the Ph.D. program in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2004. Michael focused his dissertation on the culture of the Western prison system. His fieldwork was completed through both volunteering at San Quentin State with the Alternative to Violence Project and his travels with the European Prison Theatre Travel Diary. The later impelled Michael across Europe, from prisons in Northern Ireland, England, to Germany and Southern Italy.

While in Calabria, Italy Michael launched his study in theatre anthropology. There he met and studied with Eugenio Barba and the anthropological theatre group Proskenion in association with Linea Trasversale and ISTA. Michael has also studied with Richard Schechner at NYU, LUME at Dell’ Arte International, Odin Week, Rena Mirecka at the Grotowski Center, Sazuki method voice training, Linklater Vocal Technique, Leonard Pitt, and Shelley Mitchell at the Actors Center of San Francisco. He performed in productions with Maria Lexa and the Sun and Moon Ensemble from 2002-2009, including a self-written and co-produced solo show Twobird, which he performed in 2009 in co-production with Sun and Moon and in collaboration with the South Berkeley Community Church.

Dr. McCamish has also worked in the mental health substance abuse field on and off for the last 18 years, including 7 years as a case manager in San Francisco’s SRO homeless population on 6th Street. He has been teaching physical and cultural anthropology at Las Positas Community College in Livermore since 2007. Michael can often be found hiking in the East Bay hills with his wife, Nicole, and their daughter, Josephine Wren, in search of his southern Appalachian roots.

Founding Company Member

Valentina Emeri was born in Bolzano (South Tyrol – Italy) and moved to Rome, where she graduated from the ”German School of Rome” (Deutsche Schule Rom). Valentina studied at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts “Silvio D’Amico” from 1983 to 1986 under the direction of renowned author Andrea Camilleri.

In 1987 Valentina began working in the Italian film industry as an actress and assistant director for commercials, documentaries, TV shows, and movies. Valentina began acting in major Italian theatre productions in 1990. She eventually became more interested in contemporary theatre and ensemble work, and founded her own company, “Cortile - Theater im Hof” in her hometown of Bolzanoff. She and the company brought their production of Scarpette Rosse to the New York Fringe Festival in 2001. In addition to English and Italian, Valentina is also fluent in German. She has maintained a 12-year collaborative relationship with Freilichtspiele Südtiroler Unterland (FSU), with whom she has performed many leading roles in classical works by De Beaumarchais, Goldoni, and Gogol. Valentina has appeared in more than 40 theatre productions and 15 movies. Throughout her acting career she has continued to perfect her craft with various teachers. She studied the Stanislavski method with John Strasburg (son of Lee Strasburg) and a form of structured improvisation with Anatoly Vassiliev at the School of Dramatic Art in Moscow. Valentina completed a Masters in Theater Pedagogy under the direction of Jurij Alschitz at the “Protei”(Italy) International Theater Project Center. This Center is run in association with “Akt –Zent” (Germany) and “Skut” (Scandinavia).

In 2000, Valentina fell in love with an American and has been living in the Bay Area since 2002. She has worked with several companies here including Maria Lexa’s “The Sun and Moon Ensemble” from 2004 to 2006. Valentina, Rita Venturini, and Simone Bloch have recently created Organic Site Specific (OSS). This company organizes and leads entertainment and art tours of the Mission District with the MAPP. She is also part of “Blue Heart Planet”, a company that uses improvisational acting techniques and exercises to facilitate organizational development. For three years she has participated in the “Dias de los Muertos” parade in San Francisco. For one of those years, she built an altar for the parade with a grant from the Marigold Project. Valentina has also been teaching drama to elementary school children for the past three years in after school programs. Valentina has continued to study here in the United States. These studies include the Linklater vocal training technique with Lisa Ann Potter and Laban for Actors with Adam Venker. Valentina’s love for the theories and practices of Rudolph von Laban, led her to complete her certification as a Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst (CLMA) in 2009 with Integrated Movement Studies in Berkeley, directed by Peggy Hackney. In 2010, she began a collaborative effort to create “INFERNO THEATRE”, a community-based theater group focused on providing high-quality theatre and training to Oakland Public School students and the greater community. Valentina would like to bring her experience as an actress, teacher and facilitator to the important work begin done by the Inferno Theatre Company.

Founding Company Member

Simone was born in the United States but grew up in France, where she completed her formal education in addition to training in dance and theatre from a very early age. Simone completed her studies in literature and languages at the university level and became a certified German language teacher while attending classes in Paris with the “Forum du Mouvement”, Maria Munk and Antoine Campo. She also participated in numerous workshops with Mamadou Dioume, who worked with Peter Brook. Simone has continued her professional training both here and abroad through various acting, voice, writing, movement and dance workshops.

Simone worked with several experimental theater companies in France, and performed in various festivals in both North-Africa and France, including Avignon. She worked in Paris at the “Théâtre du Temps” with the Kyogen and Nô master Jungi Fuseya. Her dance career includes performances in Modern, Contact Improvisation and Hip Hop shows. Through dance, Simone was introduced to Body-Mind Centering (BMC) and eventually began her certification in the School for Body-Mind Centering in the USA in 1999. In 2001, she moved to the Bay Area and became a certified Somatic Movement Educator and Infant Developmental Educator. In addition to her work as a performer, Simone also teaches theatre and dance classes to children, and has created several shows with her students. She is a trained Doula, a certified hypnotherapist, and continues to teach both French and German.

She has performed both with and without masks in numerous productions with the “Sun and Moon Ensemble” since 2001. She was both an actor and dancer in the multimedia solo show Invaded Dreams by Caroline Arragain in 2001, and played the lead in Do You Have Time To Die by Imani Harrington. In 2002 she danced and acted in the DWEEB Production of Beckett's Last Dance by Jonathan Whittle. In 2003 she was Marx's wife with the Political Players in Marx in Soho, inspired by Howard Zinn. In 2004 she danced in the Xyandz Project Hymenoptera at Yerba Buena Gardens. Simone has also appeared in several short films. As a member of Organic Sites Shake, she has led tours of the MAPP in San Francisco. She has participated in several other interactive performances, and has practiced Applied Improvisation with Blue Heart Planet.

In the midst of all these words and movements, performing and teaching, Simone is a passionate multicultural woman who recently took on the enjoyable and challenging role of being a mother. She is very happy to be one of the founding members of Inferno Theatre, with whom she is enjoying this latest creative collaboration.