Theatre Re presented ‘The Nature of Forgetting’ on Thursday, October 25th at 7:30 in the Weis Center, following a free health and wellness fair at 5 p.m. in the Weis Center Atrium lobby.The London based troupe performed a spectacular, heart wrenching story of early onset dementia. Accompanied by a live band, the actors traveled through the memories of the main character, Tom, from his boyhood to his marriage. There was little dialogue, most of which was intentionally faded in the music to replicate a foggy memory. Tom is haunted by three main players; his mother, his best friend, and his childhood sweetheart. Their voices echo throughout the story, fragments of his past that leach into his present. On the prop-cluttered set, the actors moved about like acrobats; dancing with tables, leaping from chair to chair, running in a wild chase important events in Tom’s live as they unravel. Each actor perfectly embodied the energy of their character; when Tom was in the classroom, you saw the child, when in the present, you saw the age creeping up on him. Theatre Re’s representation of memory loss is both soul crushing and hopeful. They manage in 75 minutes to fully invest in the audience. I assume that every person watching saw a piece of themselves in Tom. The play struck a sinking fear that maybe, one day, we too will become victims of memory loss. But even when all is lost, our connection to our humanity can keep up grounded. “Broken does not have to mean defeated.”
The Weis Center’s next performance is Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives on Thursday, November 1st at 7:30 pm.
Tickets are $30 for adults, $24 for seniors 62 and older, $20 for youth, Bucknell employees, and retirees, and $10 for Bucknell students. They can be purchased at the Campus Box Office, or online here.