dream play - created in june 2003 - is a performance made up of loose dream fragments looking to each other for a connection but never certain whether the connection is actually there to find. the text, spoken by one of the performers, is an example of this. it is constructed from different dream recollections molded into a loose fitting story yet never finding clarity in its direction. equally, the performers - bart hoevenaars, jade hulscher, eva meijer, caroline de nerée, clara palli monguilod, patricia and edd schouten - move through their individual space never quite touching or certain of each other's existence.

i don't want to speak. it's far too early and my mind buzzes with uncertainty. i see the wash line ghosts have inched a little closer to my sanity. crunched together in chaotic folds where first their lines were symmetry.

the first tram heralds the sunlight rising into another kind of day. it rumbles a soft contour of sound unheard except by those whose tired eyes are open.

i'm tired.

it extends to my thumb which is disjointed in some memory of unimportant victory. a war wound from a game i didn't need to play.

i see visions of different realities in memory's eye. the rising of a table cloth flag up a rickety pole stuck in the soft sand. it dances by the window, too close to the empty house. green, red, perhaps a dirty purple intertwined, mixed together by the wind. its symmetry thrown in dissaray like a white washline ghost reaching for something i could never grasp.

its secret.

the older women march in memory with the table cloth flag their lead. their chins high with pride, rekindled power, rediscovered grace. agility. bones, muscles, joints recall and they form tight lines and sharp corners as they file to the empty house next door.

i plant the crooked pole deep into the ground. once, twice and finally a third time filled with experience, it plunges and stands erect. and i don't know if they can see it from the street but as i look up, i see the knots will hold and for those who care to look from the empty window, a dance is their reward.

green, red, perhaps a dirty purple intertwined, mixed together by the wind.

i walk to the pond dirty with leaves and pick up the bank note along with the keys. i used to know what the keys were for and the money could rightfully be mine. but it doesn't matter somehow.

the crow craws, the sparrow chirps, the gull screeches.

i can hear them with the sun. a patch of blue in the square to the sky and a yellow button of peace on the floor. these are the moments which hold me now though i feel them slipping as one reality becomes the next again.

i travel momentarily, continuously inexhaustible to the very end but often oh so tired. my lips together unconnected to a listener except easy words spoken on paper.

what calls me. this heaviness which pulls me through the chair, the bed, the floor. and fifteen mintues later i could be making jam and toast or walking hand and hand with myself on a windy beach.

and i could ask you to love me but i don't know your face. a vision told me of your jet black hair but i never got to see your face.

no, jam and toast, some orange juice and i plug the news into my ears. stories of baghdad again and again. it comes closer. christmas in iraq. or is that too personal. or have i returned to where i don't know i want to be. or is that a freudian slip.

or what?