16th-19th February 2011 - Oxford Playhouse
David is delighted to announce that he is currently at work on the original score for a production of August Strindberg's surrealist masterpiece A Dream Play, to be performed at the Oxford Playhouse in February of this year. Produced by the Oxford University student company BlindSpot Productions, and using a new adaptation of the script by Emma Reay, A Dream Play will see the Playhouse transformed into a magic wonderland of love and tragedy encapsulated within the vibrant dream of a daughter of the Gods.
Written in 1901 and first performed in 1907, Strindberg described A Dream Play both as "the child of my greatest pain" and his "greatest joy". A troubled playwrite, Strinberg wrote it after a near-psychotic episode and follows his perspective of life being an illusion, similar to a dream. The play itself is seen as an important precursor to the surrealist and impressionist styles, and the plot itself undulates between near-reality and almost-complete abstraction as we follow Agnes, daughter of the Vedric King of the Gods, who has been given the opportunity to explore the human condition through the context of a dream induced by her father.
The main challenge identified for the music in this production is in creating a soundscape that underlies the narrative - as fragmented and unusual as it may be - while never allowing itself to move away from the dream world and become 'real'. Notwithstanding a number of diegetic pieces that are integral to the dream itself, and a handful of ideas that will carefully permeate the dream from Agnes' waking world, David's objective for this score is to compose a piece that is as imprecise and undulating as the dream itself - not by establishing a conventional storyline through themes and development, but rather through the semi-conscious exploration of ideas that are never exposed.
Further details will be posted here as the score nears completion, but in the mean time perhaps the best summation of the production can be found in Stridberg's preface:
The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, dissolve and merge. But one consciousness rules them all: the dreamer's; for him there are no secrets, no inconsistencies, no scruples and no laws. He does not judge or acquit, he merely relates; and because a dream is usually painful rather than pleasant, a tone of melancholy and compassion for all living creatures permeates the rambling narrative.
A Dream Play is being performed from Wed 16th to Sat 19th February 2011 at 7.30pm (Fri 8pm) plus Thu and Sat matinees at 2.30pm. Tickets cost £9.50 / £11.50 / £14.50 and can be purchased from the Oxford Playhouse website.