| "I am the narrator of this play, and also a character in it," states Tom, the first person focalizing narrator ("FPFN") of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, a drama Williams called a "memory play." In memory plays, FPFNs directly address the audience, recounting antecedent, personal events. Recollection becomes reenactment as narrative discourse alternates with dramatic dialogue. FPFNs also participate as their bifurcated younger selves in these scenes "embedded" within the narrative: FPFNs, therefore, simultaneously inhabit two distinct temporal frames. Existing dramatic theories prove inadequate to explain such narrative-driven structural complexity; however, narratological theories offer suitable analytic tools: specifically, Gerard Genette's concept of "focalization" (as expanded by Mieke Bal) enables the explication of the mediative omnipotence and structural control exercised by the FPFN.; The first part of the study includes a descriptive/historical survey based on Frank K. Stanzel's concept of "mediacy" and the classical distinctions between mimesis and diegesis. Aspects of mediacy in drama are placed in historical context with special attention paid to the diegetic experimentation of Shakespeare, Brecht, and Wilder. The wide array of diegetic elements in contemporary dramas are examined within a mediative hierarchy culminating in the memory play form. Twenty two memory plays are identified.; Part Two includes an examination of the concept of focalization and its attendent opportunities and challenges for playwright, director, and actor. Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, and Larry Kramer's The Destiny of Me are analyzed based on the powers, limitations, and narrative reliability of the FPFNs in each play. A brief guide to the analysis and staging of memory plays is included.; Whether memory plays are based on historical or personal fabulae, they tend to feature developmental constructions rather than the crisis-driven constructions of traditional, mimetic dramas. FPFNs may be described as either "reflexive" or "reflective" based on their degree of narrative control, their relationship to the past events, and their reasons for narrating. Memory plays allow powerful staging of otherwise "non-dramatic" events: they present the soul of the focalizor. |
