ABSTRACT
For many years following its publication in 1902 A Dream Play was considered a reading drama that lacked dramatic action and presented instead ‘the spooky, contourless life of dreams’, which was great poetry but alien to the theatre (Bark 1981: 84). It was a play unlike anything that had been produced on the Swedish stage before. Even in the larger context of the European theatre the play was much ahead of its time and constituted a unique challenge to existing stagecraft. When in 1907 director Victor Castegren persuaded Albert Ranft, the owner of The Swedish Theatre (Svenska Teatern) in Stockholm, to put on the play, there were seemingly insurmountable difficulties to overcome. These included the challenge of creating a dream atmosphere on stage. The script itself offers strategies for visual transformations without heavy machinery and too many set changes. Shifts in location are suggested in the stage directions, for example, by light change, lifting away a backdrop, or having certain stage properties, such as a tree or a door, remain on the stage throughout the performance but used in varying contexts and functions. By these simple means scene shifting is indicated while a sense of familiarity is suggested amidst seemingly random change, as in dreams when an object or a person looks familiar but not quite identifiable. Strindberg’s stage directions for scene one propose a simultaneous décor that combines a changing backdrop with standing side wings on which a montage of images suggests the various milieus of the play. These stage directions implicitly seek to avoid realism by presenting an abstract montage to replace the conventional painted scenery, the need for set construction, and disruptive scene changes. As Strindberg explains in an undated note attached to his sketch of the scenery – presumably from 1909 when the Intimate Theatre planned to put on the play – the performance should begin and end with the image of the castle’s façade painted on a backcloth and illuminated from behind, while the sides are left in darkness. During the rest of the performance he wanted the façade of the building to recede into shadow and the appropriate details of the side-wings-montage to be highlighted (Strindberg 1988b: 154–55).
