Spring Break
Romantic, Oriental elements dominate 'The Dream Project'
by Cassie Seinuk
News | 4/17/07
Posted online at 4:27 AM EST on 4/24/07
The Brandeis Theater Company's production of The Dream Project, created by an ensemble of graduate actors, straddles the barrier between life and waking life. The show, directed by Jon Lipsky, a professor of acting and playwriting at Boston University, opened Friday and runs through April 29 in Spingold's Laurie Theater.
A collection of the graduate acting students' dreams, the play is a personal telescope into the minds of these actors and unlike anything ever performed on a Brandeis stage. The actors play themselves and stage their most absurd fantasies, such as Ramona L. Alexander's unsettling "Monster Dream," and Sara Oliva's (GRAD) romantic excursion in the second act.
"Dreams," says Lipsky, "give us access to a range of experience that includes our mundane life but then goes far beyond it." The Dream Project exceeds anything audiences will imagine with a surreal set, emotional lighting design and abandonment of even the most infallible theatrical conventions.
It is challenging enough to create one's most personal imaginings onstage, and this show managed to accommodate 10 dream scenes. Eliza S. Rankin, a set designer and scenic artist in the M.F.A. program, wowed the audience with a set resembling a wondrous jungle gym. Actors played on the curved lines and jagged corners of the structures. Two walls were added to the space to allow more wing space and to add elevated doors to the set, giving the actors multiple levels on which to perform.
The levels create different spaces for the dreams: Scaffolding and stairs formed a higher platform for the more dramatic and physical action, and a lower level of the stage was used to symbolize enclosed spaces, such as prison cells and bathrooms. An uneven dock on stage right doubled as an indoor space in actor Lindsey McWhorter's dream and later as a wharf in Oliva's.
Other accent pieces-such as two Chinese lanterns hung from the grid above the stage and an Asian-inspired gong on the dock-infused the whole design with an exotic tone. In his director's note, Lipsky states that in dreams, "[an actor] visits places as unusual as Prospero's Island, the forests of Elyria and the castle at Elsinore."
A collection of the graduate acting students' dreams, the play is a personal telescope into the minds of these actors and unlike anything ever performed on a Brandeis stage. The actors play themselves and stage their most absurd fantasies, such as Ramona L. Alexander's unsettling "Monster Dream," and Sara Oliva's (GRAD) romantic excursion in the second act.
"Dreams," says Lipsky, "give us access to a range of experience that includes our mundane life but then goes far beyond it." The Dream Project exceeds anything audiences will imagine with a surreal set, emotional lighting design and abandonment of even the most infallible theatrical conventions.
It is challenging enough to create one's most personal imaginings onstage, and this show managed to accommodate 10 dream scenes. Eliza S. Rankin, a set designer and scenic artist in the M.F.A. program, wowed the audience with a set resembling a wondrous jungle gym. Actors played on the curved lines and jagged corners of the structures. Two walls were added to the space to allow more wing space and to add elevated doors to the set, giving the actors multiple levels on which to perform.
The levels create different spaces for the dreams: Scaffolding and stairs formed a higher platform for the more dramatic and physical action, and a lower level of the stage was used to symbolize enclosed spaces, such as prison cells and bathrooms. An uneven dock on stage right doubled as an indoor space in actor Lindsey McWhorter's dream and later as a wharf in Oliva's.
Other accent pieces-such as two Chinese lanterns hung from the grid above the stage and an Asian-inspired gong on the dock-infused the whole design with an exotic tone. In his director's note, Lipsky states that in dreams, "[an actor] visits places as unusual as Prospero's Island, the forests of Elyria and the castle at Elsinore."
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