Port Richmond actor offers free Shakespeare to city schools
Joe Caltagirone wants to bring one-man Julius Caesar to Philly kids.

IN 2011, JOE CALTAGIRONE, a bartender/actor from Port Richmond, was watching TV coverage of angry "Arab Spring" crowds toppling leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, when he suddenly flashed back 30 years.
Caltagirone remembered being in a thrift store on Kensington Avenue in the 1980s, browsing through the "All Books 10 Cents" shelves, when he came upon an old Kensington High School for Girls library copy of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar."
Caltagirone, 61, remembers thinking, "When a book's down to 10 cents, it's two feet from the trash can. Caesar and Shakespeare for a dime! How can I go wrong?"
He took the book home, and "thanks to the good footnotes, I understood it," he said, laughing.
Then, he put it on a shelf and forgot about it for 30 years - until he was watching the massive populist uprisings of Arab Spring.
"I saw crowds of angry people marching in the street, ousting Qaddafi and Mubarak," Caltagirone said. "There's Qaddafi walking around, believing his own bull, and then: Bang! He's gone.
"It reminded me of when [Mark] Antony spoke at Caesar's funeral and turned the crowd against Caesar's killers," he said.
Caltagirone took his "Julius Caesar" down from the shelf and spent two years memorizing the five-act play by handwriting the lines over and over again.
And then, being an actor who had entertained corporate and cruise-ship audiences for years by impersonating Detective Columbo in original mysteries, Caltagirone wanted to bring his one-man "Julius Caesar" out of his house and into people's hearts.
Dressed in a white shirt, white tie and dark slacks, he debuted the pivotal Act III scene at Bensalem High School last spring, first playing Brutus convincing the crowd that Caesar's murder was necessary to preserve Rome, then playing Antony, who turned the same crowd against Brutus.
"It's the most fantastic crowd manipulation speech I've ever heard," Caltagirone said. He even played the Roman crowd reacting to both speeches. The students loved it.
Caltagirone felt as good as he did when he won first prize in the 2013 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's city gardens contest for his 1,000-tulip community garden on his corner of Tulip and Cumberland streets.
Brutus/Antony is an actor's dream role, Caltagirone said, and he is living that dream.
He told the Daily News that he will gladly give free performances of his one-man "Julius Caesar" for any Philadelphia public school, community center, library or museum that calls him: 215-425-5153.
Caltagirone is hoping school teachers and librarians will think, "Caesar and Shakespeare for free! How can I go wrong?"