Author Description

Over the past ten years the generally accepted understanding of human memory has shifted radically, reflecting popularized articulations of recent advances in the cognitive sciences. While the relationship between cultural memory and theatre has been addressed extensively— particularly in Canada—questions of how the dynamics and mechanics of memory inform and act on creative strategies in Canadian dance, performance, and theatre have rarely been raised. This issue of CTR is a response to a junction between this perceived shift in understanding and a growing body of Canadian performance projects that involve artistic questions and strategies of memory. In these projects — and in these articles — simplistic and outdated understandings of memory are challenged and split open by practices that are acutely aware of memory as a complex process that affects artists and audiences in multiple ways. These essays and performance documents offer inspiration to imagine what both artistic and scholarly exploration of memory in theatre, performance, and dance can lead to in terms of creative strategies and understandings of how performance acts.