“War Dreamer” Delves Into A Mind Gripped by Warfare, Trauma and Nanobots
Loading Dock opens up process to audiences on first post-shutdown work
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson faced questions around child pornography cases from Republican senators—questions that promoted falsehoods and echoed QAnon talking points.
Ginni Thomas urged then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 election results, declaring that Biden-supporting election officials would soon be “living in barges off GITMO to face military trials for sedition.”
A Nebraska state senator took to the floor to decry reports that children who “identify as cats” were being provided litter boxes at local schools.
And that’s just the news of the past week.
Conspiracy theories and misinformation have taken on a terrifying ubiquity in American public life. It’s a growing crisis that Loading Dock Theatre’s new work, War Dreamer, tackles from the perspective of one soldier returning from several tours in Iraq.
Created by Leegrid Stevens and starring Erin Treadway, the co-founders of Loading Dock, War Dreamer runs through April 3rd in a developmental production ahead of a full run at The Wild Project next year.
“There is so much room in people’s minds now to distrust major institutions,” said Stevens, who also appears in War Dreamer in a small role. “So it is a very short jump to really crazy, to everyone is nefarious and there is a demonic cult eating babies.”
War Dreamer follows Jesse (Treadway) in her efforts to reconnect with her husband, find steady work and bond with her young child. As her mental health deteriorates, Jesse becomes convinced that her problems stem from experiments secretly conducted on her unit by the U.S. government.
Conspiracy theories are often born from kernels of truth, Stevens noted, making it harder to identify when you’ve crossed over into paranoia.
“It’s never a straight, clear border,” he said, noting U.S. government lies around the Iraq war and its use of sonic weapons in Vietnam as just two examples.
Out of this mix of truths and uncertainties, and struggling to realign herself with the rules of civilian life, Jesse concludes that tiny nanomachines have infected her bloodstream and are taking over her body.
The show is technically complex and a workout for Treadway—much like Loading Dock’s 2019 Spaceman , a solo piece about an astronaut floating through space. The production, directed by Stevens and Jacob Titus, immerses the audience into Jesse’s increasingly unstable mind.
When Jesse suffers a panic attack on a date, live vocal manipulation turns the date’s words of concern into horrifying and unreal noises. In another sequence, a drive to the store blurs with memories of a roadside attack in combat.
The staging jumps around through time and place, helped by a cast juggling multiple roles and rapid transitions, all of which adds to a sense of disorientation.
“You’re seeing what she’s seeing, and it’s so incongruous with the environment and the people around her,” said Treadway.
As Jesse’s psychosis worsens, the staging grows more intense. Suffice to say that a body being taken over by nanobots isn’t something War Dreamer leaves to your imagination.
Stevens and Treadway were able to workshop War Dreamer even before venues reopened, thanks to a unique arrangement: They live in the theater. Loading Dock’s space in Downtown Brooklyn is in the ground floor of a loft building. The couple live in one half of the space and converted the other half into a black box theater that seats 25.
“It allows us to build something over a course of time that has more intricacies to it,” said Stevens, noting the typically tight turnaround time for off-off Broadway works.
“[Usually] you are opening about five days after you load into the space you’re performing in,” he said .“It absolutely affects what you think is possible in terms of scenery, in terms of design, lights and sound —and it doesn’t allow designers to let something evolve.”