The University of Iowa Department of Theatre Arts will present the next offering in its Mainstage series, A Dream Play by August Strindberg, at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 7, in the David Thayer Theatre in the UI Theatre Building.
The production—newly adapted by Caryl Churchill and directed by David Hanzal—also will run at 8 p.m. March 8-9 and 13-16, and at 2 p.m. March 10.
In A Dream Play, a young woman comes from another world to see if life is really as difficult as people make it out to be. Written in 1901, Strindberg’s characters merge into each other, locations change in an instant, and a locked door becomes an obsessively recurrent image.
Strindberg, along with Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, is one of the three major pioneers of modern realism in the theater with his plays Miss Julie and The Father. In addition, Strindberg single-handedly ushered in a new kind of drama that found its inspiration in dreams: A Dream Play, Ghost Sonata, To Damascus I, II, III, The Keys of Heaven, and The Great Highway. These plays became the prototype for expressionist drama and later of absurdist theater. It is hard to imagine the plays of UI’s own Tennessee Williams, or Edward Albee, Eugene O’Neill, Georg Kaiser, Eugène Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett, without Strindberg.
As Strindberg himself wrote in his preface, he wanted “to imitate the disjointed yet seemingly logical shape of a dream. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist.” Churchill, perhaps the most fascinating and respected female dramatist in the English-speaking world, has taken on Strindberg’s Dream in this spare and resonant adaptation.
Hanzal is a multidisciplinary performance artist pursuing his Master of Fine Arts in directing/theatre. At the UI, he has directed RED//a thing about the heart, Ondine, Lady from the Sea, Alice in Wonderland, Child’s Play, The Lord of the Underworld’s Home for Unwed Mothers, Angel Bones, Rogue’s Dance, and he served as assistant director for Antigone 2.0.
A Dream Play includes material and themes of an adult nature, including nudity, simulated violence, and imagery not suitable for children.
Tickets are $17, ($12 for seniors 65 and up, $10 for youth up to 17, and $5 for UI students with valid ID) and available at the Hancher Box Office in Old Capitol Town Center, 319-335-1160, or www.hancher.uiowa.edu/tickets.
The Department of Theatre Arts is part of the Division of Performing Arts in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For accommodations at the production, contact the Department of Theatre Arts at 319-335-2700. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.