When Young Playwrights Are Kept Awake Because of History: Cultural Memory and Amnesia in Recent American Plays
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Ramón Espejo Romero
Abstract
Borrowing from both a painting and the retrospective exhibition of David Wojnarowicz, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, this paper targets two recent American plays: Annie Baker’s The Flick (2013) and Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance (2018). In both, the playwrights point to the neglect of history, or rather cultural memory, as I will insist on calling it, as one of the ills affecting a “historicidal” society such as that of the United States. An immersion into the present and concurrent obliteration of one’s cultural inheritance results in a populace easily manipulated in the interests of corporate control, and more importantly for the plays under consideration, into unhappiness and disconnection, an erlebnis, in sum, which proves lethal for individuals and the larger groups of which they form part. Both plays further seem to argue that the most troublesome of such a thing is how little consciousness of the problem there is, a surefire indication that induced amnesia is making alarming headway among the younger generations.
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- “It Can’t Happen Here”: Howard Brenton’s The Churchill Play
- “My Skin Is Not Me”: The Transformations of William Shakespeare’s Othello in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet
- “You Don’t Know Who This Man Is”: Hospitality and Trauma in Alexandra Wood’s The Human Ear
- Family Matters: Trauma and the Legacy of War in James Allen Moad II’s Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home
- When Young Playwrights Are Kept Awake Because of History: Cultural Memory and Amnesia in Recent American Plays
- This Is England 2021: Staging England and Englishness in Contemporary Theatre
- Memory, National Identity Formation, and (Neo)Colonialism in Hannah Khalil’s A Museum in Baghdad
- Book Reviews
- Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson, ed. Performing Dream Homes: Theater and the Spatial Politics of the Domestic Sphere. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvi + 238 pp., €84,99 (hardback), €71,68 (ebook).
- Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish, and Brandon Woolf, ed. Postdramatic Theatre and Form. London: Methuen, 2019, xii + 266 pp., £52.50 (hardback), £26.09 (paperback), £37.12 (PDF ebook).
- Sarah J. Ablett. Dramatic Disgust: Aesthetic Theory and Practice from Sophocles to Sarah Kane. Bielefeld: transcript, 2020, 199 pp., €38.00 (paperback), €37.99 (PDF ebook).
- Clare Finburgh. Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017, xv + 355 pp., £76.50 (hardback), £26.99 (paperback), £21.59 (PDF ebook).
- Kim Solga. Theory for Theatre Studies: Space. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, 208 pp., £45.00 (hardback), £11.69 (paperback), £9.35 (ebook).
- Shonagh Hill. Women and Embodied Mythmaking in Irish Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019, x + 257 pp., £75.00 (hardback).
- Marco Galea and Szabolcs Musca, ed. Redefining Theatre Communities: International Perspectives on Community-Conscious Theatre-Making. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2019, 262 pp., £76.00 (hardback).
- Roxanne Rimstead and Domenico A. Beneventi, ed. Contested Spaces, Counter-Narratives, and Culture from Below in Quebec and Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2019, 348 pp., $71.25 (hardback), $71.25 (ebook).
- Jenn Stephenson. Insecurity: Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: U of Toronto P, 2019, viii + 286 pp., $75.75 (hardback), $57.75 (ebook).
- Molly Mullen. Applied Theatre: Economies. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2019, xiv + 265 pp., £38.31 (hardback), £31.10 (paperback), £22.58 (Kindle ebook).
- William C. Boles, ed. After In-Yer-Face Theatre: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xvi + 251 pp., £79.99 (hardback), £63.99 (ebook).
- Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor, ed. The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance. London: Methuen Drama, 2020, 280 pp., $157.00 (hardback), $126.00 (PDF ebook), $126.00 (EPUB/MOBI ebook).
- Stephen Greer. Queer Exceptions: Solo Performance in Neoliberal Times. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2019, ix + 222 pp., £80.00 (hardback), £20.00 (paperback), £20.00 (ebook).
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- “It Can’t Happen Here”: Howard Brenton’s The Churchill Play
- “My Skin Is Not Me”: The Transformations of William Shakespeare’s Othello in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet
- “You Don’t Know Who This Man Is”: Hospitality and Trauma in Alexandra Wood’s The Human Ear
- Family Matters: Trauma and the Legacy of War in James Allen Moad II’s Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home
- When Young Playwrights Are Kept Awake Because of History: Cultural Memory and Amnesia in Recent American Plays
- This Is England 2021: Staging England and Englishness in Contemporary Theatre
- Memory, National Identity Formation, and (Neo)Colonialism in Hannah Khalil’s A Museum in Baghdad
- Book Reviews
- Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson, ed. Performing Dream Homes: Theater and the Spatial Politics of the Domestic Sphere. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvi + 238 pp., €84,99 (hardback), €71,68 (ebook).
- Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish, and Brandon Woolf, ed. Postdramatic Theatre and Form. London: Methuen, 2019, xii + 266 pp., £52.50 (hardback), £26.09 (paperback), £37.12 (PDF ebook).
- Sarah J. Ablett. Dramatic Disgust: Aesthetic Theory and Practice from Sophocles to Sarah Kane. Bielefeld: transcript, 2020, 199 pp., €38.00 (paperback), €37.99 (PDF ebook).
- Clare Finburgh. Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017, xv + 355 pp., £76.50 (hardback), £26.99 (paperback), £21.59 (PDF ebook).
- Kim Solga. Theory for Theatre Studies: Space. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, 208 pp., £45.00 (hardback), £11.69 (paperback), £9.35 (ebook).
- Shonagh Hill. Women and Embodied Mythmaking in Irish Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019, x + 257 pp., £75.00 (hardback).
- Marco Galea and Szabolcs Musca, ed. Redefining Theatre Communities: International Perspectives on Community-Conscious Theatre-Making. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2019, 262 pp., £76.00 (hardback).
- Roxanne Rimstead and Domenico A. Beneventi, ed. Contested Spaces, Counter-Narratives, and Culture from Below in Quebec and Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2019, 348 pp., $71.25 (hardback), $71.25 (ebook).
- Jenn Stephenson. Insecurity: Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: U of Toronto P, 2019, viii + 286 pp., $75.75 (hardback), $57.75 (ebook).
- Molly Mullen. Applied Theatre: Economies. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2019, xiv + 265 pp., £38.31 (hardback), £31.10 (paperback), £22.58 (Kindle ebook).
- William C. Boles, ed. After In-Yer-Face Theatre: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xvi + 251 pp., £79.99 (hardback), £63.99 (ebook).
- Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor, ed. The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance. London: Methuen Drama, 2020, 280 pp., $157.00 (hardback), $126.00 (PDF ebook), $126.00 (EPUB/MOBI ebook).
- Stephen Greer. Queer Exceptions: Solo Performance in Neoliberal Times. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2019, ix + 222 pp., £80.00 (hardback), £20.00 (paperback), £20.00 (ebook).
