On the darker edge of the theatre district. Where play houses, and coffee grottos share a symbiotic relationship. Where Poetry and Political pieces are handed out on corners. Where the stares meet for a few seconds longer. There is the Dream Thearter. Here in one of the shattered pieces of the fallen kingdom of Bohemia. This is where the children of the in-between crawl out from the cracks in the sidewalk and bath in existence. The clothes of dead grandparents filter down through a chain of charity stores and end up here, on the bodies of people sharing lattes and opinions on astral travel. Here on a dirty sidewalk, behind a red door, there is the Dream Theatre.

It doesn’t advertise, but somehow its patrons find their way to its door. Suspicions of subliminal messaging have been whispered by its regulars. They line up to buy their tickets, a pillow under their arm, and slippers on their feet. They gather in the foyer. Sipping peppermint tea or fresh cocoa from the bar. A pantomime clown plays the violin in the corner and the room bubbles over with solid whispers. The ten-minute bell gives them a chance to brush their teeth before they roll into the theatre. A circular room with a ring of beds all around the outer walls and a stage in its centre, filled with a collection of strange instruments.

              Tonight the performance will be staring DJ (dream jockey) Maria, on tour from San Francisco. As the sleepy passengers settle into their beds Maria introduces herself.

“This is a dream I wrote last year, called Paradise. It’s about growing a garden in a desert and how… well I don’t want to ruin the surprise”. Maria lists her influences, including her grandmother, various indi bands and the harmonic sound of the ocean. The performance begins.

The DJ places a fragile record onto her grandmothers Grammarphone. A brass flower, in constant bloom. She plugs her own ears as the revolving rhythms lower the participants into a conscious sleep. Although their bodily functions slow down and many faculties of their minds turn off, their frontal lobes are still pulsing with wakeful thoughts as they enter into the dreamscape.

“I step into a desert of empty strange pulsing magnetic soil love journey maybe now”. The DJ holds the microphone up to a pallet of sand, to inspire a sense of texture. She continues to artfully craft the dream with words and instruments. The pop of a balloon. Dripping water into a bucket. False voices, inventing characters which may be to one dreamer a dead grandmother, to another a teacher and to a third, a stranger in the street they never meet but wanted to.

The minds of the dreamers are like a heard of ferrel horses, wanting to take the dream, run with it, make it their own. But Maria, the Dream Jockey knows how to control the wild mind. Snapping the whip, strumming the harp and blowing on their closed eyelids. She continues throughout the night, but eventually her surreal story has to end; with a recording of songbirds, a mother’s snappy calls, and an alarm clock.

“Thankyou. You’ve all been a great audience. You can buy my merchandise by the door”.

They stumble out of the dream theatre and into cafés, ordering coffees and pancakes or rye bread. And they loudly discuss the dream and the differences they experienced. One felt he was drowning in an ocean of underwear, while his friend had been swallowed by his preschoolian sandpit, while diving down to retrieve a favourite red truck and discovering it was actually an alien. They dissected its highlights, and weak points and whether it is making a satirical comment on society or identity or sexuality or the nature of love. They left to shower, or to walk in the park. To rotate their feelings in their head and to try to understand the strange world they had visited. And they may not yet feel it, but already, inside of each of them, a desire is growing and flourishing, to revisit the Dream Theatre.