Memory Play

Side Man is an example of a memory play. In this type of drama, the action is directed by the memories of one character. As the character has flashbacks to his or her past, the play dramatizes these memories, bringing them to life for the audience. Side Man is different than the typical memory play, however. While most plays of this type dramatize only what a character can remember, Clifford remembers back to events that happen before his birth. Drawing on things that he has heard from his parents and others, Clifford reconstructs this past, going back as far as 1953, the year that his parents meet and just before the rock explosion that began with Elvis Presley in the mid-1950s. In order to keep Clifford, who is technically unborn in the 1950s, part of the action, Leight indicates the following in the stage directions: "Throughout the...