King Lear Program Prologue

As humans, we rely on our memory for everything—muscle memory to guide us through our days, memories of our loved ones to bring us joy, memories of pain to remind us of the things we shouldn’t do again. We test our memories with puzzles and games, we fortify them with photos and videos. We trust our memories to be truthful, to remind us of who we are, where we’ve been, and where we intend to go.

But memory is notoriously fickle—it is often faulty and, as we age, it becomes more and more fleeting. So what happens when a powerful mind suddenly becomes weak? What does it feel like to lose control of your memory? Anger and frustration, sorrow and confusion coalesce into the hellscape of a war-torn mind. King Lear’s howls upon the heath are not the cries of a madman, they are the call of a man adrift within the sea of his own mind.

What does it feel like to forget? And, perhaps most haunting, what does it feel like to be forgotten?