Mnemonic
(Simon McBurney)
Katrin Cartlidge died of complications due to pneumonia on September 7, 2002. The 41-year-old actress was one of the original creators of Theatre de Complicite?s devised play, Mnemonic. Her tragic death occurred in the middle of their two-year international tour and from that day every performance was dedicated to her memory. The poignancy and irony of that one futile gesture encompasses all of the hope and profundity of Mnemonic. Mnemonic is a memory play not just in name, but definition. Theatre, by nature, is an act of memory. Simon McBurney, the artistic director of Theatre de Complicité, called Mnemonic an act of collisions. The play was created by the collisions of the cast and crew who used material from their own lives. The play includes a collisions of words from a diversity of sources. The fusion of memories that created Mnemonic helped form the highly original work, a work of not just the casts? memories, but rather, the memories of the human experience as a whole. Mnemonic follows the journey of three people, two alive and one long dead. In 1991 tourists descending the Alps discovered a naked body emerging from the ice. The 5,300- year-old Iceman?s life and death, and the myth surrounding it, interweaves with the lives of a contemporary man and woman struggling to find themselves and each other. Virgil, alone in his flat, suffers from insomnia as he tries to understand why his lover, Alice, left him 8 months before. Alice travels across Eastern Europe on a pilgrimage to find her father and, by doing so, attempts to uncover her own identity. Memories and imaginings, pasts and presents, truths and fictions all collide in this play. As Mcburney describes the play: Stories of journeys, fragment, reflect, repeat and revolve like the act of memory itself. The characters find healing through pain and journeys. The external scars on the Iceman are there in order to heal internal maladies. ?You can see marks on the body. These marks are tattoos. There are fifty-seven tattoos on his body. A pen draws the Iceman?s tattoos live on to Virgil?s back.?(34) When Virgil receives the tattoos, he is attempting to heal his emotional scars from his relationship with Alice. Virgil receives his tattoos in between conversations with Alice and imaginings of her life. When she final communicates with him after 8 months of silence, she tells Virgil of her journey, of why she had to leave and where she is. This communication is the beginning of both of their healing. As Virgil turns into the Iceman, his self-discovery has begun.
Resumos Relacionados
- Badal Sircar?s ?third Theatre?
- After The Fall
- Alice In Wonderland
- Virgil Earp: Western Peace Officer
- Mayakovsky A Tragedy
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