On to the New Works Festival!

Hahaaa!! First post of the festival! Beat ya, suckers!

(sorry)

Thoughts on “Dream Sequence”

I’ll summarize it briefly for those who didn’t watch it: eight people reenact/narrate one of their individual dreams, framed by a black-clad cowboy who asks questions like “did he dream her, or she dream him?” at the beginning and the end of the show. No sets other than eight chairs. Some changes of lighting. Soundtrack ranging from crickets and cars to Ella Fitzgerald and Carlos Gardel.

For each segment, the main actor would tell his dream and illustrate it with some repetitive movement (cocking a gun, swimming, dancing or just abstract gestures). Many times they described the same action they were mimicking. I don’t think it worked. Perhaps it lacked spectacle. Perhaps it was too much telling instead of showing (or both, as it were).

One of the segments was about a guy and his ex-girlfriend. Though it wasn’t a particularly remarkable story, the tension between the two characters gave it the drama that lacked in the rest of the play. The other segments had no counterparts to the protagonist other than the casual and brief opposition of a clerk, waitress or teacher.

Some of the performances were very captivating, with the main actor being “manhandled” by his peers in ways that distorted faces and dispersed or concentrated the whole cast in visually interesting ways.