Life is Still a Dream

It seems sometimes as though life turns in circles, like a dream... Earlier this year, I brought Sheila Callaghan's Fever/Dream to the students of Warren Wilson College. It is, of course, an adaptation of Calderon's classic, Life Is A Dream. Callaghan's brilliant take on the original was to mine its plot for contemporary themes related to the competing unrealities of corporate life and new electronic media.

Now, I've made plans to spend a night in New Mexico to see the premiere of the contemporary opera version by composer Lewis Spratlan. Spratlan won the Pulitzer Prize for the work, as presented in concert, but the upcoming Santa Fe Opera production is the premiere of the whole. Spratlan was my professor at Amherst College way back when, and I heard about the opera then. I've always wondered when it would find its way to the stage. So, it's oddly circular for me personally that I'll hear the work just before returning to Amherst myself.

A nifty NYTimes article about Spratlan and the opera is here. Could it be that the opera is finally having its debut (and Callaghan's play was so successful) because life today can seem so virtual, so dream-like?

Of course, I could be wrong, and mostly life is more circuitous than circular. It may be fitting that I'll be going to Santa Fe by way of Los Angeles, where I'll be directing Much Ado About Nothing for Independent Shakespeare Company. On second thought, that's a circle, too: I was in their inaugural production of Henry V on the lower east side more than a decade ago, before all this virtual nonsense was even dreamt of...

All that has nothing to do with this show, but it's refreshing to think that what is old can be new. And it's getting standing O's (yes I know how self-promotional that sounds! but hey, I'm packing and need a lift).