Arts and Entertainment

Dream Play begins a new era of Hamilton College productions in Kennedy Center

By Zachary Oscar ’18

For the first Hamilton College Theatre Production of the academic year, Professor Carole Bellini-Sharp directed A Dream Play, originally written by August Strindberg and now adapted by Caryl Churchill. Written as a precursor to early 1900s dramatic movements, the play focuses on a series of events surrounding a young woman who comes from another world to experience what life is like, and if it is really as difficult as human beings make it out to be. The surrealist elements of the play take shape in the form of a dream that the main character Agnes, a daughter of the Vedic god Indra, is constantly trying to interpret and even live. She meets a plethora of characters who have a myriad of experiences before her eyes such as sadness, torment, happiness and death. Throughout the play, there’s some door that no one ever seems to open and that all the characters fear to open on account of “the good and the great.” The door is meant to hold the secret of life inside of it, but, of course, there’s nothing inside. At the conclusion of the play, an author and Agnes ascend from the material world (or perhaps a dream; it is unclear) and join the gods above.

The play as it stands in written form is especially difficult to grasp, and it requires a significant understanding of philosophical thought that was spewing in the early 1900s. Strindberg wrote that his play “sought to imitate the disconnected but apparently logical form of a dream. Anything can happen, everything is possible and plausible. Time and space do not exist”. This is where the only problem with the play comes in. “Anything can happen” was readily apparent, as throughout the production I watched the characters on the stage take on multiple personas, come on and off stage in gorilla or pig masks, and even a quarantine officer dance to the “Monster Mash.” I almost reevaluated my belief that the play is absurdist, rather than surrealist.

It stood out to me as an odd choice by which to christen the new theater space. It is relatively inaccessible for a typical audience, and cackles would come occasionally from the elderly folk in the rows behind me while I tried to comprehend exactly what was taking place. That was another problem I personally faced; as a casual theater-goer, I tried to hard to find a plot in the show when in fact there isn’t one. The performance featured some contemporary music as well, which took me away from what was happening on stage and caused me to focus on what I was hearing.

However, essentially all the issues I had with the production were based, as I said before, on the writing of the show itself. Even as someone who doesn’t have that great a grasp on the creation of the play, its roots or the intricacies of the writing, it was easy to see that the set created for the play was exceptionally well done, and its cast was very powerful. It was clear that when each actor was on stage, he or she was focused on enveloping him or herself in the dream and ultimately helping move Agnes along her journey to discover what the human condition really is. It is also important to note that each actor essentially played more than one character, and one person consistently played no character. Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the actors, no matter what role they were playing. The new Romano Theatre felt well used, and the multi-purpose set came to life. Through the combination of Bellini-Sharp’s directing choices and the performance of her actors, the play became accessible by its end as a comment on reality, the meaning of life and the world of dreams.

No comments yet.

All Arts and Entertainment