Photos and press from A DREAM PLAY: Open Theatre at Takoma Theatre

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All production photos by Page Carr

[A] striking lead performance by Tricia McCauley and sumptuous costumes courtesy of Evgenia Salazar ...                                TREY GRAHAM                                 WASHINGTON CITY PAPER

A Dream Play fuses a western modernist's despair at the human condition with ancient Eastern ideas about why we're all so miserable to and with one another, and if the philosophical mix often seems more than a little thick, the imagery it inspires can still be pretty striking.  Joe Martin and  Open Theatre bring more style than substance to the production they've mounted at Takoma Theatre, but they bring quite a bit of style indeed.  One vivid illustration of the ideological fusion finds a champion of humanity (Chris Davenport's impassioned and impressive Advocate) strung up crucifixion-style; behind him  Michael C. Stepowany and Mahima Poddar's projections suggest stained glass windows in which Hindu gods have supplanted the usual saints and martyrs, while around him a motley chorus of black clad mourners, white robed revelers, and carmine- footed Bharata Natyam dancers chant a De Profundis scored for sitar and surbahar.  (Shubha Sankaran, Brian Q. Silver , and Dainis Jirgensons provide the live music.)  .... A Dream Play is nothing if not a kind of meditation, a deliberately ponderous and circular thing that makes most of its major points ... essayed with the kind of dreamy- lyrical tone Martin takes with this production ...                                                                                    TREY GRAHAM                          WASHINGTON CITY PAPER

Sanskrit drama meets Swedish expressionism in scholar-director Joe Martin's latest experiments with Open Theatre.  And while the pairing might appear unlikely to the casual theatregoer, Martin suggests it is very much in keeping with the origins of August Strindberg's revolutionary late career opus, "A Dream Play."    "This strange play emerged in 1901, and it's one of Strindberg's plays that gave birth to expressionism," Martin explains.  :I was interested in where it came from, so when I did my book of Strindberg translations in Sweden, I was investigating more the later period of his life."      Martin continues: "It has to do with his spiritual crisis--well, it was a psychological crisis, actually--that led to a period of searching, of a Christian mysticism.  And then he began reading a lot of Eastern philosophy."    As its title suggests, "A Dream Play" doesn't play by the usual rules of European narrative, favoring the improbable tumble of scenes and images associated with the drem world.  The story, such as it is, follows the daughter of the uber-deity Indra as she descends to Earth to uncover the roots of Man's unhappiness.  In the text, the Daughter--a Srtrindberg creation who does not exist in Indian mythology--travelsthrough a decidedly European world.  But Martin wanted to try something different....     To assist him in this blending of East and West, Martin turned to Christel Stevens, and teacher of Indian dance ...  The pair mounted a a summer workshop ... at Catholic University as a means of recruiting and training the actors who would make up the "Dream" cast.  "I gave them all dance lessons," says Stevens, "I taught them the hand movements--how to tell stories with their hands in the Indian style."  The resulting production is a hybrid of Eastern and Western theatrical conventions ...                                                          DAN VIA                          THE WASHINGTON POST

The Deans of Philosophy, Medicine, Theology and Law lead All Right Thinkling People in a revolt against Indra's Daughter -- who has revealed that the secret behind Strindberg's mysterious door is Nothingness.

[...] Director Joe Martin has taken a very Swedish script and embellished it with all the touches of Indian theatrical traditions that so fascinated Strindberg at the time he wrote it.  This play and the others of that period in Strindberg's life, To Damascus and The Dance of Death are seen as the birth of expressionism in the theatre and Martin has emphasized that very quality.  Don't look for anything like Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler which premiered only ten years earlier.  Then Northern European theatre was dominated by plot and psychology.  Here, just a decade later, Strindberg was taking it into philosophy, replacing plotting with rumination and realism with expressionism.  Martin emphasizes the change as he sets up impressionistic stage pctures at a leisurely pace.    Martin's cast is directed to use a highly stylized performance technique with formal, almost silted gestures for nearly every line of dialogue ("Look out there" is accompanied by an arcing gesture of the arm, "I'm suprised" by a crossing of the arms on the chest) that is at times hypnotic....Tricia McCauley, as the daughter of the god whose journey is at the center of the piece takes a more subtle approach to the mannerisms, which works well because she is on stage practically the entire three hours ...                                                                                                                                          POTOMAC STAGES