Blind Dreamers

Director Sheryl Stoodley has worked with 10 actors to create a haunting, dreamlike family portrait, and to explore what lies beneath this family’s veneer of polite civility. Family members strive for connection while struggling to meet familial and societal expectations.
The narrative unfolds through gesture and movement, augmented with song, text and a live original score by guitarist/composer John Sheldon.
Bausch, who died in 2009, used a variety of "actor-tasks" in creating her company’s work in order to uncover basic human motivations. Through physical action, relationships are revealed and developed, and the way a gesture is performed begins to define a relationship and connect to larger themes.

As with Bausch’s work, Blind Dreamers is built on elements of the actors’ own experiences, translated into gestures of connection, personal struggle, and striking interaction. Through structured improvisational compositions, wild games, actor-tasks assigned by Stoodley and choreographer Lisa Enzer, a physical language specific to Blind Dreamers emerged within the ensemble.