Evaluate
Mahesh Dattani’sTara as a memory play.
Dattani’s
Tara is a memory play as it is narrated by the main character focusing on the past. In Tara, memory plays an
important part, both thematically and in terms of the play’s presentation.
Thematically, we see the detrimental effects of memory in the form of Tara’s
living in the past. As far as the play’s presentation is concerned, the entire
story is told from the memory of Dan, the narrator. Selective memories, remembered
events with music, with peculiar lighting, altered and edited realities of past
made the play presentable in certain ways that give it a complete shape of a
memory play. This is how we see the play, directly as a memory play.
Dattani’s Tara confirms to almost all the characters
of a memory play. A pure memory play combines the following features as
propagated by Tennessee Williams:
1) a character
experiences something profound and usually painful.
2) an amount of
time ellapses, or, as Williams says, there is an "arrest of time" in
which the consciousness of what has occurred forms.
3) the re-living of
the same painful experience over and over again, until the character is able to
reach redemption.
