Theatre and Dreaming.

 

Edward Hopper, Solitary Figure in a Theatre. c.1902-4

It is problematic for me, as a playwright, to believe that more truth of meaning is found in actions and images than in words.  But it's true.  When we remember our dreams, we remember the colours, shapes and feelings ahead of the actual words that are spoken.  By way of proving this, I once had a dream that I was ordering coffee from a Caffe Nero in Notting Hill that I used to frequent when I worked in a store on Westbourne Grove.  To provide some background to the consequences of this dream, I must mention that a friend once told me how much better an Americano tastes with pouring cream rather than milk.  Since I first tried it, I have never looked back.  But, ordering my coffee as such in this Caffe Nero caused the baristas to look at me with both confusion and concern and continually get my drink wrong. To return to my dream, because I endured this farce so repetitively the script is one that I can, apparently, recite in my sleep because I remember looking at my watch and seeing that I had spent thirty minutes trying to get my order right.  Yet can I remember how distinctly I cried, "pouring cream, not whipped cream!" in the dream?  Not as vibrantly as I remember the images: the barista's face, my watch, the sunshine on the road and the bright white of the buildings.

            This caused me to wonder, what is it that dreams are made of?  According to Freud, it is the desires of the subconscious that, beyond the censorship the waking mind gives to them, are freely explored.  Furthermore, he describes the process of dreaming, and of interpreting that dream, as "the fulfilment of a wish" (Freud, 1991) that is either suppressed or realised in the waking world.  Conversely, then, when the dreamer commits some awful act such as murder, rape or adultery it is an inhibited urge from the depths of their psyche.  Understandably they seek to distance themselves from the dream, to shirk responsibility of it, which Freud labels as 'displacement'. This becomes more complicated when we consider Andre Breton's description of such an occasion as "supremely revealing", yet it is "in no way contaminable by morality, actually experienced "beyond good and evil" in the dream" (Breton, 1999) because of the nature of its abstraction from reality.  What Breton seems to suggest is that in the dream state, we care not for the consequences of our actions nor the character of them, only our desire to perform them.  Within this, to turn briefly to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, we can understand the state of the dreamer as the ultimate state of man - der übermensch - free from the confines of morality and free to explore his potential.  He sees the height of a cliff and wonders not, "Is it safe to climb it?" But rather, "how shall I climb it?"  Conducive to this, as Breton writes,

 "The mind of the dreaming man is completely satisfied with whatever happens to it.  The agonizing question of possibility does not arise.  Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish.  And if you die, are you not sure of being roused form the dead?  Let yourself be lead." (Breton, 1924)

Therefore, as we can see, it is purely a matter of free will.  The justification of things as "good" or "evil" is a triviality that encumbers the waking man; it this act of 'censorship' we submit to for the sake of journeying amicably through the day.

            But then, what is real?  If our dreams reveal our true feelings, what does that connote about our approach to our 'real' lives?  If we are constantly suppressing our true will for the sake of living harmoniously with one another, who can speak of honest relations? Breton also writes, "Perhaps my dream of last night was a continuation of the preceding night's, and will be continued tonight with an admirable precision" (Ibid.) and in this respect, it seems plausible that the dreaming world should be the 'real' world.  Especially when, as we have established, it is where man is most truly and freely himself.

            Perhaps 'plausible' is too strong a word to associate with such an idea.  But I am often given to half-jokingly lament over the terrible state of the world (ruining the British countryside with the train route for the HS2 is my latest source of woe) and I long for a world other than this one, like a neighbour's house that is cleaner with better tea and finer wines.  Tell me, is dreaming not that world?  Breton described the dreamer as 'satisfied' which, even in a nightmare is an apt description because we do not doubt the reality of what we see.  that is to say, the images of our minds are so convincingly clear that we respond emotionally to them and at last, this is where I return to my initial quandary.  the question was, how can a playwright portray a world realistically and honestly through something that is built on words?  To put it succinctly, I see language as the expression of our conscious and movement as that of the sub-conscious.  If then, according to Freud's analysis of our dreams, our true self bleeds through the activities of our sub-conscious that is remembered as images, then surely this flaunts the fallible nature of language as a vessel to truth.  Therefore, how can a playscript - a dialogue - achieve this illusion of truth?

            Outside of this, of course, there are many styles of theatre advocating innovative ways of offering, dismissing or downright screaming the 'truth' about life.  In the same vein of surrealism, we need only look as far as Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Sarah Kane's Cleansed and Harold Pinter's The Homecoming to see how three similar, yet very different plays communicate what it means to be alive.  But, crucially, here we must remember the ultimate intention of any play: it is to be performed.  What we remember from a production, like from a dream, are images connected to emotional responses that convey the story for us.  Where is reality, where is truth, where is life?  It is eternally up for debate, most especially in theatre.  And so, I turn once more to Andre Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism, because his answer gracefully bypasses any definite provocations:

"The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere." (Ibid.)

Breton, A. (1999) Nadja Penguin, London.

Breton, A.  (1924) Manifesto of Surrealism [website] Available at: <http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm> 1999
Freud, S. (1991) The Interpretation of Dreams, Penguin Freud Library, USA