Originally written in 1901 by August Strindberg and reimagined by Caryl Churchill in 2006, Occidental Theatre’s “A Dream Play” follows a young woman’s journey to discover if life is really as difficult as people make it out to be. The play, performed by the Theater & Performance Studies department, ran from Nov. 2-5 at Keck Theater.
Queenie Ngo (senior), who played Agnes, said “A Dream Play” is not only her first Occidental production but also her and three others’ senior comprehensive projects.
According to Ngo, Agnes is a daughter of the gods and comes to earth in order to discover firsthand why humans are always complaining. Ngo said that this is a play for and about everyone, and that theater is a place of catharsis and self-discovery for not just the actors on stage, but audience members as well.
“If I had to put [the play] in one sentence: Agnes f—- around and finds out,” Ngo said. “And damn, does she find out.”
Ethan Remez-Cott (junior), who played the Officer, said “A Dream Play” is his second play at Occidental. Remez-Cott said that the play, which takes place in a dream, mimics the whimsical and nonsensical nature of dreams, as it jumps around in time and setting.
Laural Meade, director of “A Dream Play” and resident professor of Theater & Performance Studies department, said that her main challenge as a director was figuring out how to strike the balance between logic and illogic.
“We know that dreams can feel very illogical,” Meade said. “What’s happening, why did that happen — weird things happen. And yet within all that logic, it has to make sense.”
With a cast of 14 actors and over 40 roles to assign, Meade said that she looked for actors who were willing to take risks and play many different people. She also said that since there are many romantic couples in the play, chemistry between actors was important in her casting.
Meade said that while she has done expressionist and experimental theater work before, it is the first time she has deeply dealt with the style of this play.
“[The play] refreshes every few moments,” Meade said. “There’s a strange new thing happening and it has to make sense or else it can become boring or just overly confusing.”
Sophie Eurich-Roscoe, a licensed psychologist who attended the show, said the play accurately depicted what dreams are like, and she would have wanted to see it four or five more times.
“It’s so loaded with symbols,” Eurich-Roscoe said. “You kind of have to guess what it’s about and find your own feelings in it.”
Remez-Cott and Ngo both said that the biggest challenge for cast members was the impressive amount of costume changes that took place during the show.
According to Ngo, some cast members only have the time span of a few lines to change from one character’s costume to another. Isabella Lambert (junior), who plays Edith, said that she and two other cast members have seven costume changes — which is the most costume changes that any singular cast member has.
Listed in the program four times, Ngo not only acted in the show, but also worked on props and helped paint and build the set.
“People always say ‘the magic of theater,’” Ngo said. “It’s not magic — it’s blood, sweat and tears and effort and time.”
Ngo said that despite how labor-intensive the production process is, the collaborative aspect of theater is what makes theater so beautiful to her.
“The best part of [theater] is that it is not about me in the slightest,” Ngo said “I can not do this by myself. Nobody ever could. So many of us put so much work and effort to make theater, to make people laugh, cry, smile… and that’s just phenomenal. That’s poetry to me.”
Contact Michelle Teh at teh@oxy.edu
