LIFE IS a DREAM Translated and Adapted by Nilo Cruz Original Music by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen

43rd Season • 414th Production SEGERSTROM STAGE / FEBRUARY 2 - MARCH 11, 2007 David Emmes Martin Benson PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR presents Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s LIFE IS A DREAM translated and adapted by Nilo Cruz original music by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen Walt Spangler Ilona Somogyi Scott Zielinski Rob Milburn and SCENIC DESIGN COSTUME DESIGN LIGHTING DESIGN Michael Bodeen SOUND DESIGN Warren Adams John Glore Jeff Gifford Erin Nelson* CHOREOGRAPHY DRAMATURG PRODUCTION MANAGER STAGE MANAGER DIRECTED BY Kate Whoriskey Jean and Tim Weiss HONORARY PRODUCERS CORPORATE PRODUCER This adaptation was commissioned by South Coast Repertory. Life is a Dream • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P1 THE CAST (in order of appearance) Rosaura, noble lady ................................................................ Lucia Brawley* Clarín, servant .......................................................................... Matt D’Amico* Segismundo, Prince ............................................................... Daniel Breaker* Clotaldo, jailer ......................................................................... Richard Doyle* Basilio, King ........................................................................... John de Lancie* Astolfo, Duke ........................................................... Jason Manuel Olazábal* Estrella, Princess ........................................................................ Jennifer Chu* Revolutionary Leader/Lead Servant ............................................... Luis Vega* Ensemble ........................................ Michael Irish, Ary Katz, Ceilidh Lamont, Lovelle Liquigan, Tara Louise, Andrew Scott, Luis Vega* LENGTH Approximately two hours, including one 15-minute intermission. PRODUCTION STAFF Assistant Stage Manager ................................................... Nina K. Evans* Casting .............................................................................. Joanne DeNaut Assistant to the Director .......................................... Benjamin Pohlmeier Production Assistant ................................................ Jennifer Ellen Butler Fight Consultant ................................................................... Martin Noyes Stage Management Intern .................................................. Jason Landers Music Chart Preparation .................................................. Gregory Nicolet Deck Crew ............................... Brian Coil, Emily Kettler, Andrew Strain Additional Costume Staff ......................... Valerie Bart, Bronwen Burton Swantje Tuohino, Bich Vu, Katie Wilson Please refrain from unwrapping candy or making other noises that may disturb surrounding patrons. The use of cameras and recorders in the theatre is prohibited. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the theatre. Cellular phones, beepers and watch alarms should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers. Media Partner Official Airline P2 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • Life is a Dream A Superpower in Decline to a profound sense of manifest stylized syntax… and a heavy de- destiny. By the seventeenth centu- pendence on greatly exaggerated ry, however, national pride was metaphors and wordplay…. The- coming under increasing strain. An matically, Baroque writers came to ominous portent was the catas- terms with their disappointment trophic defeat of the Invincible Ar- over Spain’s political decline by mada by the English Navy in 1588. emphasizing the deception and un- More important, the shiploads of certainty of earthly existence, hark- hen Calderón was born in 1600, gold and silver that flooded into ing back to the biblical view of life Spain was the most powerful coun- the country from the New World, as a walk through ‘the valley of the try in the world, but the seeds had much to the envy of Spain’s Euro- shadow of death’; such a life was a already been planted of a decline pean enemies…. were not nearly mere illusion that could be shat- that would take it, by the time of enough to finance the staggering tered only through the liberating Whis death in 1681, to the humiliat- military expenditures of the Span- embrace of death. To emphasize ing status of a second-tier power. ish crown against those same Euro- the illusory nature of this existence, The story of Spain’s rise and fall is pean enemies on the continent…. the Spanish Baroque relied on the sobering tale of a country that “By Calderón’s time, Spanish three central metaphors: life as art, collapsed under the burden of its literature had assumed a set of life as theatre, and, most important own achievements…. I will begin characteristics that later critics, bor- for Calderón, life as a dream.” with three salient general features rowing from art history, termed of early modern Spanish society: Baroque. Formally speaking, the — Michael Kidd, religious intensity, inequality before Spanish Baroque in all literary gen- Hispanic Studies, the law, and a deep sense of na- res employed elaborate or highly Macalester College tional pride that suffered serious blows throughout the seventeenth century…. “In most people’s minds, the year 1492 is associated with Columbus’s maiden voyage to the Indies. Although Columbus… died insisting he had reached India, it soon became apparent that he had come upon two great continents previously unknown to Europeans. Spain’s primary claim to those continents and to whatever riches and natural resources they contained catapulted it almost immediately from its traditional, Mediterranean sphere of influence onto the center stage of European politics, forever changing the course of its history…. Columbus’s voyage, together with other momentous events of 1492 and several that soon fol- lowed, cemented in Spaniards’ identity a proud nationalism bound Life is a Dream • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P3 The Light of Reason Critics Comment on ‘Life is a Dream’ ers may say life is a dream; Segis- toms, no passions or tragic dignity, mundo must find out whether this no comic charm. The doctrine of is true or not by living his own fate which it represents is that of life. Moslems and a few gentiles. In — Edwin Honig short this detestable play is a mon- strosity. Life Is a Dream is Calderón’s best — Cándido María Trigueros (1788) ife Is a Dream is not so much the known play, and also the most story of a prince who recovers his universally celebrated in the histo- What is the role of the stars in throne as of a man who discovers ry of the Spanish theatre. Its main this picture? Far from being an ar- both himself and the true nature of theme, the transience of human cane theological matter, the thrust life, who emerged from the dark- life, ancient as man himself, is still of this question is one that, in nessL of ignorance and animal-pas- proverbial in the schoolchildren’s slightly different terms, continues sion into the light of reason and round which ends, “Life is but a to spark fierce debate today and understanding. In doing so, more- dream.” Fascinated scholars have whose definitive answer continues over, he embodies one of the traced the theme to earliest Orien- to elude us — at least as of yet. play’s central themes that man’s tal philosophy and religion, to the Simply put, the issue is this: to will is free and that his destiny lies Taoist ethic and Buddhist thought, what extent is human choice medi- ultimately in his own hands, not in to appropriate passages in Job, Isa- ated — by genetics, by environ- the hands of others or the caprices iah, and Ecclesiastes, to Heraclitus, mental factors, or, yes, even by the of fate. And he learns too, in the Plato, and Roman Stoicism, and fi- stars (the widespread existence of process of discovering and master- nally to Christian ethics and apolo- astrology columns in the twenty- ing himself, that those things in life getics — the tradition closest to first century necessitates inclusion which are the objects of men’s de- Calderón’s thinking as a deeply re- of the latter term)? In short, to sire — power, wealth, pleasure — ligious seventeenth-century man in what extent is free will free? are fleeting and insubstantial in a militant Catholic country whose — Michael Kidd comparison to the permanence of empire had begun to dissolve. spiritual values. — Edwin Honig As seen at work in Spanish — Gwynne Edwards drama, the honor code represents Love, dishonor, vengeance. certain prepossessions and obliga- The ambiguous creature wearing Kingship, loyalty, rebellion. tions. First, there is pride in one’s animal pelts and lying chained in Knowledge, control, choice. class, family, good name, blood, or the tower is the prince of Dreams, illusion, reality. These heritage. Secondly there is the mankind. This is how Segismundo are the themes that haunt Life Is a safeguarding against sexual assault begins. Thereafter we are obliged Dream and make it the peer of of female members of the family to judge the moral and psychologi- such plays as Oedipus and Hamlet. — wife, sister, and daughter. cal distance he traverses in the — Michael Kidd There is the articulation and de- course of the play in order to be- fense of the principle of the free- come consciously human. He The detestable play Life is a dom of individual conscience. must go from the lowest form of Dream, so unjustly esteemed by Then there is the obligation to re- human life, the equivalent of the some, is written in such a bombas- dress an offense of insult, usually cave

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