Weird Dreams

[KMC]

So I had a very weird dream last night relating to office supplies.  I was on this seemingly unending quest to mix and match my favorite pen's ink with a better housing for the ink.  Bizzare. 

What's your weirdest dream relating to Stage Management?

[Skulking]

I have a recurring dream when I have a show running.  I normally have it the night before a matinee, and in the dream it is intermission, and it is past when I needed to call 5, but I haven't called 5 yet.  I try to call 5 but I just can't get the words out, kind of like a dream where you are running from something but no matter how long you run it is right there.  When I wake up it all seems so real, when I get to the theatre I feel like I should apologize for screwing up the previous performance. 

[missliz]

My recurring SM dream is that someone has quit before opening and they've told the producer it's because of me. It then becomes my job to go out on the street and find someone to take over the role! (In one version of this dream, I ran into Norbert Leo Butz, so that wasn't too bad).

I also had a dream where I fell asleep in the booth and woke up to an actress tapping me, telling me they'd been stuck onstage because I hadn't called any cues.

Last night, actually, I dreamed that I was putting a script in order for the show, but I'd get 4 pages in and it'd start over. Then I'd get 9 more pages of act 1, take those out, and I'd be back at page 1 again. I'm sure this has something to do with anxiety over not knowing what I'm doing in the next months!

[bex]

I had a recurring nightmare in college that I would have to go on for an actor in performance. Haven't had that one for a while, thank the lord.

Recently I've had a recurring nightmare relating to the last show I was on, which had a fairly extensive and extremely detailed/specific preset (fold the shirts exactly like this, put the blue one on top, the towel goes underneath but sticking out a little on the right side, you know the drill).
In the dream, for some reason I didn't do the preset myself, I just showed up at my call and it was already done, but it was wrong, everything was horribly wrong, and I didn't realize until the show had started. We had to stop the show in the middle of the first scene and send me onstage to fix it, which included opening up a wall to set props behind it and ruining the big act 2 reveal for the audience. Had that dream 4 times- twice during the run and twice after it closed.

Another fun one- dreamed that there was a huge snake shedding its skin in the middle of the green room, and when I told the production manager she said "Calm down, Becky! It's ok, it's not poisonous!"

[Tempest]

I will have dreams where I show up to run a show, and someone runs up to me yelling that I'm late. This person is actually the SM, and I'm apparently in the show. Then they put me in a costume and shove me out on stage, but I have no idea what show we're doing, what character I am or what my lines are. So I just end up standing on stage, staring blankly at all my "cast mates."

My favorite version of this was when my costume was a blue dress and a white apron, and I went on stage to talk to a giant cat. I thought, "Alice in Wonderland! I can fake my way through Alice in Wonderland!" It was not Alice in Wonderland.

And no, I do not suffer from stage fright in real life.

[maximillionx]

I have a recurring dream when I have a show running.  I normally have it the night before a matinee, and in the dream it is intermission, and it is past when I needed to call 5, but I haven't called 5 yet.  I try to call 5 but I just can't get the words out, kind of like a dream where you are running from something but no matter how long you run it is right there.  When I wake up it all seems so real, when I get to the theatre I feel like I should apologize for screwing up the previous performance. 

THIS...I have this dream at some point during tech, except it's "places" being called and I have just started the show.

[dallas10086]

I talk in my sleep when things get intense at work and it tends to spike during tech, so I make sure my husband tells me when I do it so I know when I'm particularly stressed. I've sat straight up in bed, eyes wide open, shaking my husband awake, telling him to move the table closer to the chair (so it's not in the way for a scene change); he knows now to just say "okay" and I'll go back to sleep. I've spent all night going through LX1 through LX10 over and over. I've woken myself up yelling, "The 13th?! No one tells me anything!" and having no idea why.

Sometimes I wonder why I can't be normal and have Hugh Jackman visit me in my sleep 

[NomieRae]

I've had many show specific ones, but usually before any opening night I have my standard crazy dream of running into the theater and being bombarded with problems (actor was arrested, parrots invaded the stage, no one can get ready because the costumes all turned pink....) and then once I get through all of that I get to the booth and go to call house to half and realize my script is blank.

Just a whole binder of blank pages.

And then I usually wake up.

[Jessie_K]

My most common SM nightmare is to suddenly realize right before a show starts that there is a giant hole in the stage floor.  The details vary (venue, show, nature of hole) but its always a giant dangerous hole that nobody noticed (or told me about) until the last minute.

[BARussell]

I was going to reply to this earlier saying I never have work dreams but I finally had one last night. I was at an opera fringe festival sort of thing and all the operas were performed at the same time and people would just randomly wander around and choose. I was told I had to go run this opera in another location and it was a weird coffee shop or something I had a perfectly prepared book and my only problem was that I couldn't find a good place to stand to cue performers so I kept moving around into different places backstage. The coolest thing about the dream though is that I composed an original German/English opera in my sleep (I think just the German words I can remember were featured.) It wasn't even stressul just an awkward dream.

[LCSM]

I composed an original German/English opera in my sleep

Show off.


I've had tech-week nightmares of having to open the show as is. I always wake up gasping with relief: "Three more days...we've got...three more...it's okay...three more days..."

[BARussell]

I didn't say it was good! 
AI remember thinking in my dream that only a 1/4 of the words in this opera are German and probably not conjugated correctly, so it really wasn't good. It's just amazing what the mind can do.

[LCSM]

Fair enough. Although you may have stumbled across what they call a first draft...

[DeeCap]

I constantly have dreams that I'm stage managing Blue Man Group. Maybe it's because I interviewed with them on two different occasions.

[Kelasaurus]

I almost always have show dreams during a run, though the worse it's going the more dreams I have, which I suppose makes tons of sense.  I don't tend to dream about theatre when I'm not working a show, but I did once have one where Sharpies were growing in my garden... That was odd.

I had one where the Artistic Director sat everyone down and told us that they had accidentally oversold the week and that we would have to do a three show day (of this 2 hour, 40 minute show) on Saturday that week. In the dream, everyone was livid and then threatened a strike. It was a freakishly vivid dream.

I have had a few dreams on different shows where we get to the theatre and a large, pivotal set piece is missing and no one knows why or where it went.

And then when I was in university, I had a dream that the all-female cast of the show I was ASMing had gone behind our backs and decided to go out for the curtain call naked on closing night, and for some reason it was entirely my fault and I got expelled.

Yup, I frequently show dream.  Those are only a couple of them.