Theodore Grammatas

If by performance we mean the “poetics of remembrance”, since it is there that the playwright’s and the actor’s memory as well as the spectators memory and social memory  creatively meet, then the theatre can be called the “art of memory” ( Samuel 1994), reflection and repetitive appearance of the past in the present and, therefore, the timely presence or the timeless past, through which cultural memory (as a collective product) is enclaved inside the individual memory (as a subjective creation) of the viewer with a holistic reference ( Schudson 1989 : 105- 112). Subsequently, the theatre becomes a privileged field of repetition, memory and mnemonic reconstruction of the texts and their performed visualisation ( Malkin 2002),  a timely cultural phaenomenon comprising and deriving meaning from the individual memory of the viewer, as well as the collective memory of the audience, with which it exists in a constant dialogue ( Jardine 2005 ). It is both a metaphorical and literal space where a “trial of memory” occurs, on the instance of the stage act of texts and “writings” of the past, which despite the fact that they took place elsewhere / at another time they make an appearance here/now ( Patsalidis  210:57 ).