Living in the Past, Living with the Ghosts: Trauma and Postmemory in Jonathan Lichtenstein’s Memory

The 'memory boom' has promoted a wide array of plays among large amount literary output in Western literature. Among these, Jonathan Lichtenstein’s 2006 play Memory is an aptly named memory play. Inspired by the memories playwright’s father, interweaves three stories: one set 1933, when Nazis took power Berlin; second East Berlin, 1990, just after fall Berlin Wall; and last Bethlehem, 2006, as Apartheid Wall was rising. Whilst connecting these separate stories at intersection memory, this paper seeks to address traumatized conflicted relation past, drawing on established trauma theorist Dominick LaCapra’s terms ‘acting out’ ‘working through’, it discusses how traumatic one’s them shape present. study then reflects Marianne Hirsch’s term ‘postmemory’ manifested well life.