Memory in Play

This innovative study examines the role of memory in the history of theatre and drama. Favorini analyzes issues of memory in self-construction, collective memory, the clash of memory and history and even explores what the work of cognitive scientists can teach us about brain function and our response to drama.

"Favorini's approach not only provides fresh and provocative readings of familiar works, but striking new interconnections between them." - Theatre Journal"These studies concretize the somewhat cerebral recounting of cognitive science and its varied views of memory construction while also explicating how constructions of memory in Western theater have been a part of dramatic representations since ancient Greece. Accordingly, the book will be useful to both theoreticians and practitioners of theater and cognitive scientists . . . the study is certainly provocative, and it adds fresh insights regarding several plays in the Western theater canon." - CHOICE

"This book will be the benchmark for the exploration of the fascinating correlations between memory s constructions and theatre s representations." - Gary Williams, Professor Emeritus of Drama, Catholic University

"This is an extraordinary study of memory in its finest filigree structures, as well as its most dramatic outreach. It is at once subtle and forceful, original and true to the master texts it puts into entirely new lights. Favorini shows memory to be a deep ingredient in parts of everyday life where we would not suspect its presence and, carrying forward this presence, in the theatre from its most ancient Greek exemplars to contemporary expressions. Throughout, the author s sure hand guides the reader into ever novel vistas of the memorial dimensions of our lives, both as these lives are directly experienced and as they are presented in dramatic form." - Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor at SUNY, Stony Brook and author of Remembering: A Phenomenological Study

ATTILIO FAVORINI is Professor of Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh, USA.