The politics of (in)decision : a hauntological reading of Dickie Beau’s Re-Member Me

This paper elaborates the features of what I call hauntological dramaturgy with reference to Dickie Beau’s, Re-Member Me (2017). Hauntological dramaturgy disturbs the boundaries between presence and absence, life and death, past, present, future, and underscores the entanglement of materiality with immateriality in the name of justice. Dickie Beau is a ‘lip-sync fabulist’ who, in Re-member Me, channels recordings of historical performances of Hamlet. The work focuses on Ian Charleson’s celebrated performance of Hamlet, which lives only in a few reviews and the memories of those people who either saw or participated in Charleson’s production.