“Theatre Matters”: Discovering the True Self in Terrence McNally’s Dedication

Abstract

In Dedication, or The Stuff of Dreams Terrence McNally explores the conundrum of the actor who uses theater to hide from, rather than explore, his real or true self. Theater’s ability to stimulate the imagination collides with fantasy’s seductive ability to narcotize pain as Lou Nuncle attempts to secure the use of a dilapidated, long shuttered, nineteenth century theater building from its owner, a crabbed, aged millionairess suffering from inoperable cancer. By paraphrasing in the play’s title the penultimate lines of Prospero’s farewell to the revels in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, McNally posits Lou and Mrs. Willard as differing types of the Renaissance magus who, like Prospero, must eschew bitterness regarding the disappointments that each has suffered and mount a theatrical production that transforms actors and audience alike.