A work unfinishing: Margin Notes: The Censorship of Dreams

The Censorship of Dreams

Seen on: Thursday, 5/07/26.

Jess Dugger as Ellie and Kat Warnusz-Steckel
as Professional. Photo by Marina Levitskaya.

Plot

In a time not too far from now, society exists under an increasingly restricted vocabulary: citizens, with no memory of the time before the Restart, go to the "Post Office" to sell their dreams, and receive daily words on little slips of paper, to eat and immediately forget. The stated goal is the erasure of conflict and dissatisfaction, but the central couple, Thomas and Ellie, struggle to navigate their relationship with each other and with the world, when they have fewer and fewer words with which to do so.

Thoughts:

As the audience enters the space we see an uncanny valley display of a couple at home in spartan domesticity: two school desks face each other, and a young woman in a mint green cardigan (a sweet and nervy Jess Dugger) sits in one, sipping from a clear square glass of water. A young man in an autumn polo (an earnest and bewildered Bryce Michael Wood) paces in slow motion the inner perimeter of their white-painted floor. Encasing them both, like bars on a cage at the zoo, are plastic strips covered in lines of text, the most notable reading in large font "DON'T LET THE PRINTER EAT YOU." Further surrounding the couple's cage are low barriers, as if to prevent the audience from getting too close to an art piece in a museum. And there, against one side of the space, the stepped platforms normally used for audience seating now display pair after pair of used shoes, low-lit as if they are rare books at the Morgan Library. Scenic and lighting designer Christopher Annas-Lee has built a mysterious puzzle box, a display case of humanity preserved by a docent who doesn't quite remember the meaning behind the moment. Is this a place from which the characters can escape to a life more like the one we know now? Or is this all that's left of a dying society, struggling through the last gasps before extinction?

Playwright Nora Sørena Casey, in collaboration with director/producer Arthur Makaryan, creates a world echoing the voices of Ionesco and Kafka, slowly doling out the enigmatic existence of this society and leaving the audience in the same state of semi-understanding struggling toward clarity as the characters are. Ellie clutches at her stomach and calls it empty but doesn't have the word for hungry. Thomas calls her his wife, but it's clear neither truly remembers if that's correct. This is a world where "I-love-you" is said emptily in the same casual lilt of a "see you later," or in a panicked show of subservience. This is a world where, when a man refuses to sell a dream at a low offer price, is told that evening to forget the word "negotiate." The Narrator figure, played to the a hapless-yet-threatening hilt by Chris Jaymes, explains to the audience that "a society requires maintenance." This maintenance involves mining and erasing dreams--the remnants which survivors of the Restart carry from their prior selves--then purging what they consider incendiary language from society's vocabulary. Thomas goes on a quest to recover the lost language, conspiring with the fantastic Kat Warnusz-Steckel's brusque Professional, in which he rediscovers the word "rebel" (he also rediscovers the word "fucking," because it is truly one of the best language modifiers we have). When Thomas finally confronts Ellie, who has not only joined the ranks of the dream collectors at the Post Office, but has climbed the corporate ladder there, the only words the two of them have left to express themselves are feral cries of frustration.

Emily White's costume design does subtly effective work: Thomas and the Professional, both attempting to recover the lost world of evocation language and knowledge, wear clothing of fully saturated warm colors: he in orange and brown, they in a red pantsuit--though the pantsuit is inadequately hiding behind a sheer black coverall, an attempt to mask their true self beneath the washed-out veneer of the Post Office. The Narrator is clad in a muted blue, signaling his supposed kinship of cool and mildly saturated colors with conformist Ellie. Ellie, though, has a more vibrant lime-green blazer, perhaps hinting that she still has a chance of breaking out, of leaving with Thomas.

So much of this production works so well in the crafting of it: Makaryan's staging, the space created and lit by Annas-Lee, the storytelling done by White's costumes, the strong performances of the four actors, the quick rhythm of desperation and anxious caution. The ideas playwright Casey is exploring are potent and immediate: when you're so afraid disrupting equilibrium that there is eventually nothing left but clear flat water, what remains of existence? But we see that even as leadership tries to remove words, their meanings remain: removing the word hunger doesn't erase the empty ache. And ultimately you cannot unmake truth. I love so much going on in this play, but the disparate elements are not always in enough cohesive conversation: the asides with the Narrator are inadequately amplified, especially for how far away he is from most of the audience, and start off in such abstract language that it is a challenge to connect it to the more concrete story he is interrupting. This leads to a higher level of confusion, particularly early in the play when we are still grasping for purchase, though eventually we catch up enough to continue the journey with the characters. I can't decide if it would benefit from some trimming and tightening, or from a deeper and expanded exploration. Perhaps it's a little bit of both. But damn, it's a great journey and a worthwhile production. The open-endedness of the final moment leaves us with a chance at hope that Kafka wouldn't have given us, but Ionesco just might.

***

Running: Now playing at Ellen Stewart Theatre (La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club) - Opening: May 4, 2026. Closing: May 17, 2026.
Category: play
Length: 1 hour, 30 minutes, no intermission.

Creative Team

Playwright: Nora Sørena Casey
Director and Producer: Arthur Makaryan Assistant Director: Julia Grullon

Company: Arte Makar Productions

Team: Samir Nikocevic (Co-Producer), XYZ Theatricals (General Manager), Christopher Annas-Lee (Scenic and Lighting), Emily White (Costume), Audrey Chou (Sound and Audio Engineer), OFF OFF PR/Paul Siebold (Publicist), Olivia Martin (Stage Manager), Olivia Zacchia (Wardrobe Supervisor), Ivàn Torres Lasanta (Associate Lighting), Sarina Rivera (Associate Scenic), Steven Pisano (Photo), Christopher Annas-Lee (Photo Editing).

Cast: Jes Dugger, Chris Jaymes, Kat Warnusz-Steckel, Bryce Michael Wood.