- An adaptation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play by María Irene Fornés
- Directed By Stevie Walker-Webb
Long, long ago, in a far off kingdom, Segismund, the rightful prince, has spent his life locked in a tower because of a prophecy that he will destroy the realm. When a mysterious visitor arrives, Segismund gets his first chance at freedom–or so he thinks. Calderón’s revered 17th century philosophical play Life is Dream is adapted here with contemporary resonance by legendary master of absurdity and subconscious María Irene Fornés. The tale of power, love, and illusion questions: What is life? A frenzy? An illusion? A dream.
RUN TIME: 80 Minutes without Intermission
CONTENT TRANSPARENCY: This production includes the use of stage weapons, onstage violence, and partial nudity, and discussions of sexual assault.
Please be advised that strobe-lighting effects will be used.
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María Irene Fornés, Playwright
María Irene Fornés was a Cuban playwright who lived from 1930-2018. Ms. Fornés was the recipient of eight Obie Awards, one of which was for Sustained Achievement in Theater. She received a Distinguished Artists Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation grants, a Guggenheim grant, an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Literary Award, a New York State Governor’s Arts Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She was also a TCG/PEW Artist-in-Residence at Women’s Project & Productions. Her most celebrated plays include Promenade, The Successful Life of 3, Fefu and Her Friends, The Danube, Mud, The Conduct of Life, And What of the Night?, Abingdon Square, The Summer in Gossensass and Oscar and Bertha. Four volumes of her plays, Promenade and Other Plays, Fornés Plays, What of the Night and Selected Plays, and Letter from Cuba and Other Plays, have been published by the Performing Arts Journal and other plays have appeared in various anthologies. From 1981-1992, she was Director of the INTAR (International Arts Relations) Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Laboratory, a national program to stimulate and develop writing abilities of Hispanic playwrights. Ms. Fornés taught at some of America’s most prestigious universities, including Yale, Princeton, Brown, Wesleyan, and Iowa, and led workshops at leading theatres, such as the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. https://fornesinstitute.com/
Stevie Walker-Webb, Director
Stevie Walker-Webb is an Obie award winning Director, Playwright, and Cultural Worker who believes in the transformational power of art. He is the founder and Executive Director of HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS an arts and advocacy non-profit that makes visual the suffering and inhumane treatment of incarcerated mentally divergent people and the policies that adversely impact their lives. He is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theatre, The Lily Award in honor of Lorraine Hansberry awarded by the Dramatists Guild of America, a 2050 Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop and a Wellspring Scholar. He’s served as the Founding Artistic Director of the Jubilee Theatre in Waco, Texas and has created art and theatre in Madagascar, South Africa, Mexico, and across America. He’s served as the Outreach Coordinator for Theatre of the Oppressed-NYC and holds an MFA from The New School, and a B.S. in Sociology from the University of North Texas. His work has been produced by: The Public Theater, American Civil Liberties Union, The New Group, Cherry Lane, Zara Aina, La Mama, Woolly Mammoth, Baltimore Center Stage, Lincoln Center, and Classic Stage.
Stevie is a regular professor and lecturer at NYU Tisch School of the arts where he teaches acting, ensemble work, and devised theatre. Currently he is a professor and Artist in Residence at Harvard University where he’s teaching a series of courses aimed at “Decolonizing the Creative Process”. The Harvard lectures will culminate in a forthcoming book.
Stevie has written and directed two films, We Got Out and the documentary Hundreds of Thousands.
Notable Theatrical Productions: Ain’t No Mo’ written by Jordan E. Cooper at The Public Theater (2019), Associate Director for Shakespeare in the Park at The Public Theater Julius Caesar (2017) and Twelfth Night with Oskar Eustis and Shaina Taub (2018), One in Two by Donja Love at the Signature (2019), Black Odyssey by Marcus Gardley at Classic Stage (2023),
Stevie has served as a director for several Audible productions including, Wally Roux Phantom Mechanic written by Nick Carr and starring William Jackson Harper, Hop Tha A by James Anthony Tyler, and Brutal Imagination written by Cornelius Eady, starring Sally Murphy and Joe Morton.
He’s a contributing writer on The Ms. Pat Show a new breakout comedy streaming on BET+ and has been commissioned by The Mercury Store for a forthcoming play called Of Mercy And Madness.
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