Forgetting, New Theatre Dublin, Aug 20th
- tomtierney
- Jun 29
- 2 min read
I hope you'll forgive a bit of shameless self-promotion - and a sidestep from our usual physics fare - but if you're around Dublin in August, you might consider visiting the New Theatre, for a play I wrote.
Forgetting is a psychological drama about Lisa - who feel certain that she knows who she is. She is twenty-five years old. She lives in Dublin. And she came into the hospital this morning for surgery.
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But she doesn’t know where she is right now, and she doesn’t know who Frank and Abigail are. And she doesn’t understand why they are saying that everything she knows is wrong.
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This is a psychological drama that sets out to ask questions about who we are, who we think we are – and who we’d like to be!
Though not about physics, and not really about science, this is technically* science fiction.
I came across the story of Henry Molaison a few years ago and found it fascinating. Possibly triggered by a fall from his bicycle when he was a child, Molaison began to experience seizures when he was 10 that became increasingly incapacitating as he grew older. Eventually when he was 27 (in 1953) he underwent a controversial surgical procedure on his brain. This did help his seizures, as intended, but led to irreversible memory loss.
Unlike the common movie image of amnesia, he always remembered who he was and where he came from etc. - but he lost the ability to make new memories. He was trapped with the idea of himself as a 27 year old for the rest of his life - until he died, aged 82, in 2008.
This play is not about Molaison. It is an entirely fictional story based on a young woman who suffers a similar fate.
Whatever about my own contribution, I can promise anybody thinking of coming along that the cast are astonishingly talented, and that they are being expertly managed by a great director, in a lovely theatre.
Booking here:
*Sadly, our definitions of science fiction are so narrow, I don't think anybody watching this would feel like they were watching science fiction.
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