Memory, Gender, Remembrance Agendas

‘The truth cries out, the truth cries out/ How do we still that urgent shout?’ asks Danny in couplets that form the refrain of Dave Duggan’sDuggan, Dave play AH6905Duggan, Dave (2005, p. 85). The voices of those who died in the ‘Troubles’ intrude into Danny’s narrative as he awaits ‘truth recovery’, a surgical examination and removal of the malignant past from his body. His flesh represents a Northern Ireland that cannot forget the traumatic past, the dead of which haunt the present causing ‘spasm[s] of pain’ (p. 85). The divisive burden of this past, and its repetition, must be broken. But, as Danny’s refrain indicates, the question remains: how and for whom is one to work through such memories? And what role does theatre play in laying down this burden?