STORY 

DREAM WITH YOUR EYES OPEN

Nocturnes is an experience that combines site-specific dance, theatre, sensory design, and interactivity to form a unique and fully immersive live performance that surrounds you. It is a sensorial journey built to activate your mind, and you become the protagonist of your own journey into the dream world.

The Doctor invites you to sample a lucid dream as one of the subjects of his scientific experiment. You will explore worlds that relate to our collective unconscious: love, sensuality, fear, loss, death, creativity, infinity, faith. But what will you uncover and what journey will be yours? How well do you know yourself? Are you in tune with your inner desires and impulses? Sometimes, one must face their fears to grow past them.

Nocturnes tackles the topics of self-knowledge and insecurity. It explores two alternate dimensions: the rational state of reality, and the open world of dreams. As dreams become more tangible than reality, the distinctly separate dimensions start to blur.

Nocturnes is produced by Nuage Productions and is an original story loosely inspired by the character and work of Carl Jung as well as the structure of sleep cycles.

Advisory: Because of the interactive nature of the show, light touch with the audience is involved. Fog and haze might be used.

“My Dear Friend—

I’m throwing a party and I would be delighted if you would attend. My study, my dreamwork is coming to a close, and we should celebrate. I hope that when you see the results, when you see what I’ve done, our disagreement can be put behind us.

The night would not be complete without you here.

I look forward to seeing you soon.

Yours fondly,

Dr. X”

be spontaneous

With technology separating individuals more than it brings us together, we need experiences that allow for and encourage human connection. As we curate our digital selves… We lose sight of who we really are.

“Constant self-evaluation, competition with other users, and incorrectly perceiving other users’ lives invoke feelings of jealousy and narcissistic behavior, both of which can lower self-esteem”

“50% reported social media hav(e) negative effects on their relationships”

“We are in a cultural moment where people are craving experience and connection. In the wake of social media, we are simultaneously more and less connected to other human beings than we have been in the entirety of our history. The performing arts represent one of many ways that people can come together, connect, and experience something that is impossible to truly replicate on a screen, phone, or computer”, Zach Morris, co-artistic director of Third Rail Projects (BizBash, October 18, 2018)

“It was a strange wake from the beginning. These things were always awkward, especially as the “host—“ no one will speak louder than a whisper, as though the body in the casket is a light sleeper whose afternoon nap we risked disturbing.

Here, in this poorly lit antechamber at the back of the church, I was standing stiffly next to the foot of the coffin. Not one person even glanced at me as they approached the body. That woman (my mother’s cousin, I think? She had the same thin smile, anyway) was silently crying as she laid her lily next to the body. Most simply touched its hand, some its face, though they never lingered. My mother was the last to approach. She didn’t cry—she was always proud of her fortitude—and she leaned in to gently kiss the corpse’s cheek and whisper into its ear. “Don’t worry— it’s warmer then you’d think,” she assured.

Suddenly, I was alone with the body. The rest must have moved into the church proper, waiting for the ceremony to begin. I sighed and finally moved to the other side of the coffin, my stomach turning as I kept my eyes fixed firmly at my feet. Finally, I forced myself to peer into the casket, into my own face. I looked sallow and strange lying there, as the dead often do. The mole on my lip was gone, covered under a thick layer of waxy makeup. Almost without realizing, I reached down to wipe it away, to see— But it was no longer then, without warning it was now. Though my eyes were closed and there was no light in the casket, whose lid now shut me off from the rest of the world, I could see; the new shoes, too tight and never worn before this; the simple black suit; and crossed over my chest in front of my face—I hadn’t noticed this before—crossed in front of my face, my wrists were adorned with my favorite cufflinks. They gazed dully back at me in the gloom, languid sentinels.

As the casket stilled (I hadn’t realized it had been moving), I began to hear intermittent taps on the lid—rain? For the first time noticed how little room there in the casket. If my heart could still beat or my lungs still fill, I’d be in a panic. As it was, I lay immobilized as I listened in mounting (but detached) horror as the rain began to fall more heavily and quickly.

Scrape.

Thud.

Scrape. 

Thud.

As it continued, the sounds became more muffled, more indistinct, more... distant. It was dirt. Not rain.

They were burying me. Time has passed since it became silent. That doesn’t matter now.

Mother was right. It is warm”.