"These plays. insist that Canadians remember, not simply the reassuring stories about war and forgiveness and family, but also the terrible ones in which we failed to act or speak or in which we were complicit through our willed forgetting or were directly responsible for war crimes. The power, artistic skill, and creative experimentation with which these playwrights present their stories and enact the dilemma of remembering and forgetting are never merely theatre, never an aestheticization of violence and cruelty. Their purpose is always, and successfully, more serious and responsible'e"to the characters, to their personal and our shared public history, and to the work that art does in this world." 'e"from the introduction.