Memories of You

Memories of You is a play about the triumph and freedom of the spirit. It validates a woman’s right to chose the shape of her own life, in the full knowledge and understanding of the lasting consequences of her desire, her imagination and her actions. In its rejection of sentiment and any search for approval outside the self, it is an intense affirmation of the humanist spirit. It defines heroism as the ability to always embrace the world as it is, and never to make do with the way it ‘should be.’ The life of Elizabeth Smart pivoted on a turbulent affair that produced four children and her one book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Yet the dramatic strength of Wendy Lill’s play resides in her clear-eyed portrayal of Elizabeth Smart’s life not as a sacrifice to one great literary work, but of the book as a mere record of one great life lived.

When her resentful, drug-dependent daughter Rose comes to visit, mother and daughter confront each other with their own distinctly different visions of the past. Rose remembers that her father used her mother; Elizabeth remembers that she chose the father of her children, and that she did not regret that choice.

AUTHOR

Wendy Lill

Wendy Lill was born in Vancouver in 1950 and was educated in both London and Toronto, ON. She lived for many years in Winnipeg, MB, and now resides in Dartmouth, NS, with her husband Richard and two children, Joe and Sam. She has written for magazines, radio, television, and stage. Her plays have been produced extensively on Canadian and international stages. Her play All Fall Down examines the roots of intolerance and hysteria and their effects on love. Sisters received the Labatt’s Canadian Play Award at the Newfoundland and Labrador Drama Festival. Primedia Productions brought out television versions of two of Lill’s plays, Sisters and Memories of You, both of which Lill scripted. (Sisters won a Gemini in 1992). Lill has four plays nominated for a Governor General’s Award for Drama: The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, All Fall Down, The Occupation of Heather Rose, and Corker. Talonbooks has also published her Chimera, Messenger, and The Fighting Days. Between June 1997 and June 2004, Wendy Lill was the Member of Parliament for Dartmouth and the Culture Communications critic for the federal New Democratic Party (NDP).