A Dream Play

As a classic work of Expressionism, A Dream Play by Swedish playwright August Strindberg is to be staged to demonstrate the expressionist features. To reveal the essence of Expressionism, in which unleashing emotions and motives comes before narration and character description, Director Chan Hang-fai Andrew unveils the characters’ hidden desires and senses of love and hatred.

A Dream Play tells the story about the daughter of Indra, the king of the highest heaven in Hinduism. She visits the human world in search of the truth of life. During her earthly existence, she experiences the pains and miseries of human life. They cannot but hurt one another for survival. With a strong overtone of Zen, the story expresses Buddha’s mercy for human beings. Strindberg presents her earthly lives as a series of dreams.

Critics describe this masterpiece as a “Zen play”, which comes up with a conclusion that human beings deserve God’s sympathy, after a goddess has gone through many a misery in the human world. The interlacing of dreams, philosophical lines and illusory scenes help express the inner feelings of the characters to the full.