‘Nostalgia comes from the Greek word nostos, meaning “return home”, and algia, meaning pain or longing. Hence, nostalgia literally means “homesickness”‘ (Wilson, 2005, p.21).

I am a very family orientated person and my solo show strongly reflects that. Due to including a strong autobiographical note within my performance, I have found that the notion of nostalgia plays a larger part than I thought it did. Janelle Wilson states: ‘Nostalgia has gotten a bad rap. Those who seem to live in the past often face criticism from others’ (Wilson, 2005, p.7). While my performance will not tell detailed stories, I will describe memories of my past from my very frank and honest perspective. I am hopeful that spectators of my performance will find that they have experienced similar situations to those I discuss, but until my performance have never come across anyone talking about them. Issues such as money, new family relations and growing up quicker than a lot your friends around you. Though I do not want my audience to feel sorry for me, I want them to feel compassion towards me, and an understanding of myself.

A key element to my performance is that I will be playing myself. While I speak of the past, it is important both to my story and to the audience’s understanding that it is me performing. I will not adopt any other character than myself which I hope is as interesting for the audience as it is for myself. ‘Placing oneself – in the past, present, and projecting into the future – is vital to each of us’ (Wilson, 2005, p.7). Some people feel that looking to the past as a negative however by looking at the past we can learn how to tackle similar issues differently if we are to come against them in the future. Though we should not look too far ahead as we never know what may be around the corner, we should not feel frightened of planning. Though spontaneity can be a wonderful thing, you can not live your life by this because unfortunately thats not the way that life works.

Wilson states that: ‘The term “nostalgia” typically conjures up images of a previous time when life was “good”‘ (Wilson, 2005, p.21). This is true for my performance although I touch upon times that I had to keep quiet about. I was never made to keep secrets but privacy is important to my family, though this meant that I had to keep in a lot of the things that I talk about in my piece. As we become older and reflect on the past, we learn to look at it differently and with retrospect learn which pieces are worth focusing on. Wilson suggests and I stand by the notion that: ‘For nostalgia to restore identity, the individual engages in selective memory and actively reconstructs former selves, while reconceptualising and perhaps reevaluating both past and present selves. Thus, memory, the actual recall of the past, and nostalgia, the emotional component of remembering and longing, are instrumental in one’s quest to know who one is’ (Wilson, 2005, p.35). Though through this performance I am not in search of ‘who I am’, I have come to learn a lot about myself and how much my past is responsible for this. My family are largely to blame for this, but I could not be more thankful.

Works Cited
Wilson, Janelle L. (2005). Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning. USA: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp.