In class, we noticed that there tends to be very little reading in dreams, so I thought this dream was particularely noteworthy for having some.
I was visiting my old highschool, St. Francis Prep. I was there to see a play and I was, apparently, very early. I was in the theatre, which wasn't the auditorium from highschool but a blackbox theatre I'd visited in my freshman year of college. The place is dark and dingy, and looks like it was inked by pen and colored in grey and brown.
Suddenly my highschool director, Mrs. Mejia, runs up to me and says something along the lines of
- John, I need you to do something for me.
- Sure, what is it?
- My lead actor is sick, so I need you to play the lead role for me.
- Holy crap, I said, I guess I can do it. Show me the script.
She leads me to the stage to do a reading. Somewhere along the way she explains that I can just read from the book for tonight's performance, provided I still do a passionate performance. I stand in the middle of the stage. I notice that she's gathered the supporting cast (which looks like more that necessary) in the chairs around the stage like a class. (It feels like it is also the acting class I took in my second year of Queens College). I am dressed like a hip dude, in a sweater and my leather blazer. I feel like I've been brought back to teach these actors of my experience, as if I'd experienced some large form of success outside of highschool.
I open the book the play is in. I can see the letters on the page (very clearly; if I had woken up I could have written them down). It's a very antiquated serif font printed in black, but highly distressed. The paper is strange. Even though it's a very old copy of the play the paper is all white, untouched by time, and glows. I feel in my mind like I'm looking into some sort of ancient book of evil, like the words held some kind of power to conjure something. However, it's in another language.
- What is this, French? I ask.
I remember the first line of the play being two three-letter words, something starting with an a. I sound it out with a French accent, and after a while, (talking like Maurice Chevalier or Marcel Marceau) give a riveting performance to the class. They applaud ravidly.
Later, I am standing in the hall right next to the stage right wing and, once again, it doesn't look like the one back in Prep, but instead it looks like the one from my grammar school, St. Fidelis, but everything is painted glowing white, but it's a lot more skanky than St. Fidelis-- there are pipes lining the ceiling dripping black stuff, there's black stuff smudged on the walls, and there's garbage on the floor. It looks like an alley behind a building. All of the sudden I see my friend from highschool, Dan, is there. He's not wearing his glasses and he looks like a heroin-addict- very strung out, with red bags under his eyes. He offers to let me come with him and his two friends to come get high. I accept, for some reason, wanting to be friendly to an old compadre I hadn't seen in years and not wanting to be rude. His two friends come. I don't see them clearly, although one of them looks like this girl Lucy I had a class with once. We walk up the hall, up a flight of stairs and through a door, into another darker hallway I don't recognize. We climb another flight of stairs into a loft.
They start up and I excuse myself
- I don't feel comfortable doing this.
I leave the way I came, get on stage, and give a great dramatic performance.
