My paper explores two emblematic Abbey productions of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulisstaged for the National Theatre of Ireland, Katie Mitchell's acclaimedIphigenia at Aulis(2001) and Marina Carr's loose adaptation Ariel (2002).Iphigeneia's new millennial re-workings were staged in response to changing times and as reactions to cataclysmic events in the 20thand 21stcenturies: the Second World War and the modern economic warfare of the Irish Celtic Tiger period. In light of this exploration of alternative kinds of memory discourse for the theatre, the focus on human rights narratives and/through memory can be read as synonymous to a universal trope for historical trauma. In my analysis, I dwell on the role of culture in forging ways through which we recount our shared "present pasts" as a fundamental human right to remember and to forget. Through the twentieth century's world wars till the not so distant Irish Troubles and the Irish Celtic Tiger period, a new rigorous understanding of myth and history has emerged while we are still learning to navigate the new century with its myriad challenges and apprehensions on a political, economic, environmental, and community level in societies in transition, migrations, borders, displacements, and diasporas. The particular performance aesthetic of both productions raised a series of questions of enduring importance: about war, nationalism, man's abuses of human rights, ambition, "the price of freedom, and inhuman sacrilege," but also about the right to remember and to forget. The productions were, thus, attempts to provide a theatrical space for internationally acclaimed theatre makers to present their work within the context of a classically informed repertory while directly highlighting the way the national Irish stage palpably commemorated the traumatic 20thcentury and the advent of a new controversial epoch almost five decades on since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
