Butterfly Dreams

Hua Hua Zhang’s production of Butterfly Dreams is a series of vignettes dealing with different forms of dreaming – sleeping, waking, desires, etc. A man falling asleep over a cooking pot is tantalized by a trio of ghostly dancers; a man affixes a kite to his face in order to fly upon the winds contained in his suitcase. A woman who cannot escape her own shadow ultimately accepts it; a man dying of exhaustion , as if to assuage his friend’s denial, is ultimately carried away by a gigantic puppet of death. Throughout this reductionist work, the simple puppets seem inordinately expressive and enchanting to the audience.