Life is a Dream

This year Brave New Looks aims to showcase an audacious look at a renaissance classic with Scapegoat Carnivale’s new project, Life Is a Dream – an adaptation of Spanish 17th Century Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s surprisingly post-modern dramatic comedy about the conflict between fate and free will. The play follows Prince Sigismundo, who has been imprisoned since birth in a mountain cavern because of a prediction that he would grow up to become a tyrant. But now the king is getting old, and having no other heir, decides to release the prince giving him one day of royalty to disprove the prophecy. Sigismundo, upon finding out his true lineage becomes enraged and his actions turn brutal. He is returned to his prison and convinced that his day of royalty was nothing but a dream. Crossed lovers, rebels and loyal servants languishing in doubt populate the landscape that surrounds the young prince and his distraught father. With a minimal set, lavish costumes and live music, the production will expressionistically highlight the play’s multiple realms of reality, contrasting the social world of the court with the barren mountain wilderness where people live outside society like beasts.

A hilarious and profound classic, with Andreas Apergis, Peter Batakliev, Julian Casey, Zach Fraser, Gemma James-Smith,Leni Parker, Julie Tamiko Manning, Dusan Dukic and Donovan Reiter, along with four live musicians.