Dream Exercise

I'm trying to get my students, right now, to do a few things in their work.

1) Get more personal -- to lean away from their instincts to be clever, put away their armor, and write what's close to them.

2) To open up to the possibilities of theater -- that it isn't film, that there's truth in realism but there's also a different kind of truth beyond strict realism.

3) To get them to be less literal with their stage directions, to take the "exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague" and really own it.

So.  This exercise:

1) Write down a dream.  Everything you can remember about it.  It could be last night's dream, it could be one that recurred, it's whatever you remember.  If you don't remember one, make it up.

2) Take that dream and turn it into a theatrical experience -- one you can share with members of an audience.  You want to do whatever you need to do to capture the ESSENCE/FEELING of that dream.  The caveat: every word you put on paper costs $100.