| Popis: |
This chapter considers the role of memory as both unifying and divisive, both restorative and destructive, in the plays of Christina Reid, with particular focus on her trilogy of “memory” plays Tea in a China Cup (1983), The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), and My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name? (1989). Memory serves sometimes as a nostalgic compensation for the present, sometimes as a unifying demonstration of the importance of the collective past, and sometimes as origin of the divided and insurmountable differences of the present. In Reid’s plays the past is something to be held sacred. The past is, however, also simultaneously something to leave behind. Reid uses this tension to question the role of memory in either transcending or transforming the self, and to question what happens if the memory is unreciprocated? What if memory doesn’t hold the solution? And what if we stopped remembering altogether? |
