IN THE DREAM CASTLE
(or WHERE'S THE BATHROOM)

A generation gave us "make love, not war" and then the same generation gave us endless conflict, burgeoning economic inequality, and Trump. How did that happen? As that generation rounds the corner into the home stretch and gets ready to shuffle off the mortal coil, IN THE DREAM CASTLE explores this question by looking at the lives of two women and their lifelong friendship from early childhood through tomorrow. To challenge assumptions and help us see them – specifically and representationally – with fresh eyes, the play introduces us to the women late in their lives and then, scene by scene, peels away layers of their experience and psyches as the action moves backwards in time through major intersections of their relationship, and the culture that fashioned them.
We first meet Deirdre and Fergus in their early sixties in conflict over Deirdre’s decision to retreat into isolation for reasons she refuses to disclose. Each subsequent scene steps back in time to major events in their lives and friendship humorously revealing information about mates, children, careers, fears, hopes, American culture, and the mysterious glue that bonds people together. With each step backward, layers are peeled away until these two women are known so intimately that there is a deep resonance with our own histories and emotions.
The end of the play brings us back to the future as we realize that everything we’ve seen has been filtered through Deirdre’s dementia-riddled Dream Castle of a brain, as she stumbles unglamorously into the sunset of her years, leaving us with not only a deep sense of her imperfect but beautiful humanity, but also food for thought as we continue on our own paths.
91 pgs. Eight Scenes.  2 Characters (2F)  Time: Now and back through the decades.  Place: Several urban apartments in a major city.  Non-realistic set uses props, set decoration, and generic furnishings to imply different locations.