HuaYi Festival 2014 : A Dream Like A Dream 

“In a story, someone had a dream; in that dream, someone told a story.”

As part of Singapore’s Huayi Festival 2014, Taiwanese theatre company Performance Workshop staged its critically acclaimed play “A Dream Like A Dream 入梦之梦”at the Esplanade Theatre. First conceived by Director and Playwright Stan Lai in 2000, this theatrical epic has been staged in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. 

A Dream Like a Dream is an 8-hour long play that begins with a doctor that loses most of her patients under her care. Surrounded by such misfortunes, she seeks solace in comforting her remaining patients. When comforted, the patients begin opening up about their lives and share their stories. 

A myriad of stories are shared- a story of a patient’s relationship with a waitress in Paris, a story of an old woman’s marriage to a French Diplomat in her younger days, a story of a train wreck… All in all, universal themes of violence, love, life and death highlight the complex relationships between lives that transcend time and space. 

This piece is performed in Mandarin without subtitles (although audio headsets providing simultaneous English translations are provided). The 8-hour long duration with a short intermission in between might seem daunting to an audience. However, with its 360-degree stage, the audience is taken away from the comforts of the traditional proscenium arch and is thrown right into the action. The scenes unfolding on all 4 sides challenges the conventions of a theatre experience, intensely confronting the audience on both a sensory and intuitive level. 

Find out more about Performance Workshop (Taiwan), click here! 

Images from huayifestival.com