Logic of the Dreamscape

There are types of dreams that we all have in common. Anxiety can sneak into our dreams in a number of ways- all of them fairly obvious. Who hasn't had the dream about finding yourself naked in a public place? Dreams of being in a driverless automobile are also fairly common. Slightly less common (or perhaps people just don't like to admit to it) are dreams of having to relieve certain pressing intestinal situations without having a private space to do so. Among actors the so called "Actor's Nightmare" where you find yourself onstage unrehearsed and unprepared is so common that Christopher Durang wrote a play about it. It is also normal for a pregnant woman to dream about giving birth to strange creatures (cats, monsters, giant talking pies...) thereby playing out the anxiety of waiting in her sleep. We all experience anxiety. What I find fascinating, however, is that the ways in which certain anxieties present themselves in sleep can be so similar in structure from person to person and yet still maintain the idiosyncrasies of the dreamer.

For example, a rather conservative friend of mine once confessed to me that in her public nudity dream she always finds herself in a formal setting amongst people she wishes to impress in her waking life. Others find themselves ready to give a speech back in their high school class. One woman I know who prides herself on her appearance and public presentation is mortified to find herself naked in a room with all the men she has ever met. As for me personally, the anxiety producing situation is less about where I find myself or in who's company but more about the fact that I am naked in public and no one seems to be paying any attention! Hello! I'm naked over here! Why aren't you looking at me?

Last night I had a curious combination of anxieties mingle into one dream. I was producing and directing a tribute to Carol Burnett in a packed Broadway house. At the last moment the two stars of my show ran out to get hamburgers at a restaurant with a notoriously slow wait staff. (As a side note, the two actors in the dream are friends of mine with whom I had brief producing partnerships before they succumbed to the lure of film and television in LA.) The curtain was about ready to go up and I did not have the two people that I was counting on to deliver the show. I found myself stepping onto the stage and winging it. I covered fairly well, trying to play two roles at once when I was faced with a major dilemma. I had sensed that the audience would love a good pratfall. If I timed it right the laugh would be enormous. However, I worried that I might harm my baby (Yes, I am even pregnant in my dreams). The action slowed down while I weighed my options and decided to go for it by signaling my brilliant stage manager in the wings who anticipated my needs and was ready with a crash box. I dove into the wings, the crash box went off and the crowd went crazy. I staggered back onstage to greedily accept my applause and went blank. I had nothing else. I should have graciously exited but I couldn't think of anything. So I sat down and meaningfully stared into the lights. The crowd turned on me. All the good will I had worked for was slowly ebbing away and all I could do was sit and hope that I would get a black out and fast. Well, it didn't happen. I was left hanging in the light and I could hear the crowd mumbling, "That's not funny", "What is she doing?", "That's stupid!", "Boo!". Finally the lights came down and Carol Burnett herself was kind enough to come onstage and start singing "I'm Shy" from Once Upon a Mattress. I took the opportunity to go to the burger joint to drag back my two actors for the second half. As I was leaving the theater I saw the audience breaking out tissues because they were laughing so hard they were sobbing. I immediately thought of a brilliant way to close the show and started composing in my mind a speech about the meaning of laughter. On the way I saw my sister and her husband peering into the window of a suburban kitchen to admire the bizarre turkey carving technique of a Jamaican woman. Rather than having the bird on a platter she had placed the turkey in a Baby Bjorn and was carving it toward herself. My sister and her husband were fascinated. With classic boldness my sister tapped on the window to request a demonstration. I wanted to warn them about the dangers of carving with a blade facing in the direction of your own neck but I was suddenly confused by the fact that I was standing on a warm beach and strange creatures were emerging from the sand after just being hatched. They mistook me for their mother and I had to lead them down to the ocean or they would die on the hot sands. When I finally reached the burger place, one of my actors had choked on his hamburger and the other refused to leave until her fries arrived.

That is when my alarm went off and I found myself wondering how it was all going to turn out. I hit the snooze, hoping to return to the dream and force it to some kind of resolution, but to no avail. I was unable to see if I could pull off the big closing tribute speech or if I could save my actor's life with the Hiemlich. Even so, I am pleased to say that even though the dream contained a startling number of pressing anxieties- it also gave me the opportunity to produce and direct (and act, I suppose) for a packed Broadway house! Normally my anxiety dreams place me in tiny black boxes where no one is paying much attention. At least this gave me a change of pace and a bigger sense of scale.

However, I don't recommend carving a turkey in a Baby Bjorn. That just seems dangerous.