Dream Up Festival 2018

Told like a fireside chat, Fredricks offers us an intricate web of bribery, blackmail and murder, including the names of dozens of players. She had been raised to revere Senator Goldwater, nicknamed “Mr. Arizona.” So she never dreamed he could be connected to organized crime until 2017, when she discovered 40 year old research by Investigative Reporters and Editors that revealed Senator Goldwater’s brother Bob had multi-million dollar financial links to organized crime figures.

A seasoned assassin is hired to wipe out an obscure fringe playwright. Yet as she moves closer to the kill, she uncovers an inexplicable link between herself and the target. 

In the first one-act, 'Coz We’re Just Friends,' a nerdy, affable, college student, struggles to refuse doing a major favor to his closest friend, despite finding himself emotionally bullied, because of his deep love for his friend and his own conceptions about friendship. The second one-act, 'All In My Head,' focuses on a black actress, who complains to her representation about her repeated casting as a maid, leading to a deeper discussion about her particular problem, the generic problem. and how it can be resolved.

Adolph, a painter-turned-sculptor, is falling under the spell of Gustav, an ill-natured older man whom he has just met. In the guise of friendly male conversation Gustav, Iago-like, makes Adolph dissect his love for his new wife Tekla. She is a novelist whose star is rising while Adolph's falls. We learn that Tekla is Gustav's former wife and she has written about him, characterizing him as an idiot. In an act of revenge, the older man is manipulates the artist to believe that his wife has selfishly robbed him of his creative strength.

A lone dragon, millenia old, last of his kind on earth, fire-breathing capacities down to barely a puff, lives in a burned-out volcano. He is Griswynd. The Humans have damaged Earth beyond repair, and those who could, have fled to a new planet, which they’ve named EarthAgain. 

First performed in 1891, 'Hedda Gabler' is about a woman who, having recently married an unimaginably bland man, is bored and resentful. When an old lover is re-introduced in to her life, she spirals down a destructive path to leach from others what she cannot obtain herself: courage and passion. Despite her misguided attempts to seize some power, she is outmanipulated. This new piece seeks to dismantle this classic piece of nineteenth century realism and zoom the perspective to Hedda. And see how much fun it can be.

The subconscious is a mysterious place: to submerge is to discover our lights and shadows, our true and complex selves. The Girl emerges into a parallel world: the core of her most vulnerable soul. It is there where all the ghosts and shadows from her past remain and where she can either face them through the presence of her inner child or let them destroy her.

What happens when your worst fear comes to life? When Eliza enters a ride called, "It’s a Fun Place After All," she attempts to face her fear of animatronics. But when the ride shuts down and she is left to fend for herself, she finds more skeletons in the closet.

This raw, queer coming-of age story is told through a unique interplay of live cello, intentional movement, and dialogue.

It's Paris 1728. Secretary of the Academy of Science affirms Newton's calculation of the force of moving bodies: Force= Mass x Velocity. When Emilie du Châtelet corrects his mistake in an open letter in the Journal of Science: Force = Mass x Velocity squared, the Secretary strikes back. Defiant, excessive, and real, the unapologetic scientist Emilie du Châtelet fought for her place as one of the world’s greatest scientists. 'Moving Bodies' reclaims Emilie's story and tells how she fought for love and science and why as a woman she was never allowed to have both.

Using Craigslist missed connections ads and verbatim stories as source material, this piece blends movement, text, music, and technology to create a dream land of opportunities lost. It is a search for something that disappeared while your back was turned. Dreamy, ethereal, and haunting, it is performed to a mix of contemporary music and soundscapes.

They cope by taunting each other with warped games of verbal wordplay and by blurring each other's realities while losing touch with their own. The trio's ordeal is meant to offer a bleak glimpse at life in the wake of a dystopian presidency, where wars will abound, words will have lost their meaning and people will have lost their way. How did the world get there?

The audience follows the life of a young man named Neil who has terrible luck in love. Unbeknownst to Neil, much of his disastrous bad fortune is due to his dead, overbearing mother, Elaine, meddling in his love life. Drama unfolds as Neil seeks to break his unlucky dating streak, while simultaneously helping his father find love again. An endearingly nosy upstairs neighbor, Millie, and her smooth-talking late husband, Fonzie, are among the quirky characters who interfere in Neil's romantic escapades as the story progresses.

Utilizing the true stories of three addicts in varying stages of recovery, audience members are propelled into the world of addiction and mental health. As the opioid epidemic and various mental health crises expand daily across the globe, 'The Rounds' confronts the many stereotypes and false beliefs about addiction as it effects people of all races, religions, genders, and ages.

Playwright Hamza Zaman delves into the seminal age of 'Sixteen' when all of life is seemingly a puzzle - the more so when you are arrested. 

When talented 20-something Danica moves to New York City to pursue a career as a musician, she assumes things will get off without a hitch. However, she soon begins finding mannequin body parts inexplicably hidden around her new apartment. Unsure if these sinister gifts are the work of a stalker or her own slowly slipping mind, she keeps the secret to herself and does her best to slog onward. As her dread mounts and Danica slowly begins to unravel, her friends become increasingly concerned until things come to a head-- literally.

'Wild Orchids' is a film noir-eque, feminist, fictional take on 1940’s Hollywood, where a secretary has a chance encounter with William Faulkner that changes both their lives…or maybe not. In 'Rosary Hill,' two gentle nuns tend to their garden, only they may not be all that they seem.

Morris, a 40-year old orphan who was robbed by his uncle of seven thousand eight hundred pounds when he was only a boy at school, is desperate to win the tontine and thus right the wrongs he feels the world has done him. His uncle Joseph is one of the last two members of the tontine, so Morris is willing to go to any length to keep his uncle alive long enough for him to win. Family rivalries give way to complete chaos in this energetic and farcical musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic black comedy of death, greed, and jealousy.

Dena and her friends love Mr. McCoe, he is the coolest. After Dena’s sister dies, he listens, helps her bring up her grades and prepare to try out for the basketball team. He then manipulates the power dynamic so that her family, friends, teachers, and school administration are not aware of the dark turn their relationship takes. A forthright and caring exploration of a young woman’s story reminding us how important it is to pay attention.

This play contains sexual violence, assault and abuse. It is not suitable for children under the age of sixteen.