Memory, modernity and generational recognition in Juan Copete’s Soliloquio De Grillos

Abstract

Abstract The enormous amount of documentaries and novels published in Spain during recent decades about the Spanish Civil War and the repression during the Franco Regime show a clear interest in the study of the Historical Memory and how the aftermath of this conflict is not only still alive, but continues to define Spain today. Contemporary Spanish theatre has not exempted itself from this ongoing dialogue and recuperation of Spain’s national past, although it has not garnered as much critical and popular attention as novels or films. This article is a contribution to the current attempts to fill this gap, analysing one of the first dramas dedicated to Historical Memory in Spain: Soliloquio de Grillos (2003). Written by the Extremaduran playwright Juan Copete, the text also foreshadows in its structure and subjects other pieces that years later would have a very important place in the development of the theatre of Memory, such as Laila Ripoll’s Los niños perdidos (2005) and Gracia Morales’s NN12 (2010).