A Dream Play

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Photography: Derek Van Heel, Kevin Higginbotham

Produced by Ghostlight Theatricals at Stone Soup’s new Downstage Space (3/4 Thrust with 12 dimmers and a 9’-3” Grid), we approached A Dream Play with a decidedly surrealist influence. One unexpected source -after reading Dali considered Disney one of the great American surrealist- was the Pink Elephants sequence from Dumbo, in which characters of vivid colors emerged out of black space. Director Rob Bergquist also wanted to explore the nature of lucid dreaming, in which everyone onstage helped to shape the physical space. This was accomplished with multicolored blocks of varying sizes, which could become abstract representations of objects. The show began with a light bulb hanging just a few feet from the ground, which slowly rose to the grid as Agnes descended to Earth. At it’s pinnacle, an entire canopy of hanging lights would illuminate. The center bulb would become symbolic of the link between heaven and earth, returning and becoming more prominent at Fingal’s Cave, and finally smashing on the ground as Agnes and the Poet witness the “return of the Savior” only to suddenly find themselves full circle, back in the theatre corridor following the sudden blackout.