Memory in Play ― From Aeschylus to Sam Shepard

Memory in Play makes evident that memory, though critically neglected, is as significant as race, gender, and class as a feature of dramatic character construction. Favorini skillfully argues that dramatic models of memory need to be reckoned along with the constructions of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience in order to render a full account of the history of memory. Through this lens, the work of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, and Strindberg, as well as such pillars of twentieth-century drama as Pirandello, O’Neill, Wilder, Sherwood, Williams, Miller, Anouilh, Beckett, Pinter, Friel, Shepard, Kennedy, and Wilson are explored. By offering a vantage point for recognizing how dramatists have contributed to the conception of memory alongside other "memographers," irrespective of discipline, a lingua franca emerges for discussing a phenomenon studied from the perspectives of so many theoretical bases.

Attilio Favorini is Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh, where he founded the Department of Theatre Arts and served as its Chairman for many years. He is the founder of the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival, for which he was the Producing Director 1980-1992. He is the editor of Theatre Survey, 1969-79, Voicings: Ten Plays from the Documentary Theatre and has published widely in journals ranging from Maske und Kothurn and Theatre Journal, to Cognition, Literature, and the Arts. As a playwright, his Steel/City was voted Best Production of 1992 by the Pittsburgh City Paper, and his In the Garden of Live Flowers won the national David Mark Cohen award in 2002.