Conclusion

Abstract

The Monto Cycle offered temporary fragments of memories as embodied encounters with past lives. While each performance invoked a different aspect of the past, it did so with an inescapable sense of the present, through which I came to know more about the potential agency of the spectator when it was mapped onto the ethics of citizenship. That awakening through what Scarry and Machon would call the ‘praesence’ of the performance, began for me as personal, but as the memories accumulated over time, over performances, and through articulating those memories in conversations about the performances, my interest in the Cycle intensified even more when I realized the performances’ political power to raise consciousness, and invite active debate and perhaps, ultimately, calls to action.