In which I recount a dream. Yes, posting this kind of self-serving, of-interest-to-no-one crap is totally against the rules of blogging.

I rarely remember my dreams. I would estimate that I remember fewer than five per year. Over the weekend, however, I had a really strange dream that I did remember.

I was doing a show. Since it was a dream, there was no more context than that: it wasn’t a theatre I recognized, I have no idea what company it was, etc. The house was full, the show had started, and I’d never done the show before. It was as if I’d been called in to replace someone who wasn’t there. I was totally unrehearsed and I didn’t know the lines. I didn’t even know what show it was, but somehow this all made perfect sense in the dream.

I spent a great deal of time running from backstage to the back of the house. I ran through the wings, out to the corridors, through a bunch of rooms, and to the back of the lobby, where I could peek in at the audience and watch the show. When I finally got to the back of the house and could see the show, I realized what I really needed was not to watch the show but to find out when my next entrance was!

I decided I needed to be backstage, so I ran a hugely long, far way to get backstage, through rooms and dressing rooms and corridors… you know how dreams are. The theatre must have been a mile deep. (Awake, I recognize it as a combination of the Spayde Theatre, the Fox Theatre, and television shows.)

I finally reached the wings, and there was a prop or quick-change area set up, deep into stage right, way far from the curtains. It was an oval-shaped enclosure, sided with screens. It was like a corral, and it was gigantic. Inside this area were actors in costume pacing and prepping and waiting for cues, prop tables, and all the other paraphernalia you’d expect backstage, except it wasn’t lit.

I burst into this area – and strangely, in the dream, I had no worries about making noise – and I was so relieved to find people there. I desperately wanted to see my script, to know what my cue was, to look over the lines and see if I knew them. But a blonde woman (I think it might have been Bubba who was once in Once Upon A Mattress with me, and with whom I had an important upstage right entrance I nearly missed once) was hissing at me, “That’s your cue! You’re on, YOU’RE ON!!!”

I turned toward the scrim, heard applause for the finish of the previous scene, and panicked because I not only didn’t know from where I was supposed to enter, but I still didn’t recognize the show and I still didn’t know my lines!

Then I woke up. Thank God.
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