A dream… and an Idea
Dreams are always a great source of material for me. I often have very vivid, very strange dreams. This dream is not so strange as others I’ve had, but it does work well with a play idea I’ve been kicking around.
In my dream the houses in my neighborhood were compressed, such that it was like we were living in brownstone apartments or tenements or something that were pressed side-by-side against one another. There were two neighbors on either side of us but somehow they represented the whole of society, and yet remained as they are now: identifiable to me personally: M & L, and P & A.
Each house/apartment had a main front window that overlooked the street, with an entrance to the side. If you’re facing the apartments, standing in the street, the large window, which I will only now describe as being a display window, for the two neighbors was on the left side, with an entrance on the right; while the display window for our apartment was on the right with a side entrance on the left.
Now, there was some set of objects that were very particularly set up in each of the neighbor’s windows that are somewhat hard to describe. They seemed Asian in character and design, and yet, we all are not of Asian origin or descent. If the object I’m going to describe can be imagined as one object it would look thus: at center is a tall bamboo scroll with some scenery painted on it: perhaps it is three to five feet in height; on the sides–well, the thing may have been framed; to the right and left of the scroll was something. I cannot for the life of me remember what, now, though. I am, at this moment, inclined to say that the bamboo scroll was to the front of a table, and on either side of the scroll (and table) were tall-backed chairs as if the dining room of each apartment had been set up in the store-front windows. But part of me says that it was not a table and chairs, but something less social and more decorative. The whole of the ‘display’ was brightly lit and made to covetous design. And that is precisely the point, for you see, we did not have one. Our store front was bare, or at least, wanting.
This is where I have tied in my other idea of the Expressionist play regarding an emerald dress: now I think it will be a vase. And the vase will be what is desired. As if the vase will save the world for the wife in this play. The husband of course, isn’t so sure. If only they could get that vase and put it in the window–clearly this would be a play that highlights the lack of communication or social depth of the husband and wife.
