Contemporary Memory Plays I: The Fragmented Self

Abstract

Turning to more recent incarnations of the memory play extending beyond American drama, this chapter demonstrates that the sense of stable self is disrupted in contemporary British plays by variations in portraying how characters move into the past. This sense of fragmented self is evident in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love as well as two Irish plays, Hugh Leonard’s“Da” and Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. These works are typical memory plays in that at least one character portrays a different age in the space of a moment without a change of costume, makeup, or props. A sense of essential, unchanging self arises from such portrayals, but each play introduces twists in the performance of age that complicate that concept.