And now, Erin's Dream Theatre

[lily_handmaiden]

I've been having some interesting dreams lately, and thought it would be fun to start writing them down before I forget them. Thus I introduce the "last night i had a dream" tag.

It seems that my best dreams tend to revolve around the theatre. From the dream I had in college where my friend Whitney was Crazy Bertha in Jane Eyre the Musical, to the dream I had the night before seeing Wicked where I turned down Taye Diggs because I wanted to be friends with Idina Menzel, to the dream I had just last week where I couldn't figure out why my friend college-age Lucy Scherer kept speaking to her German family only partly in German (I now realize she was limited by my vocabulary), theatre is the place to meet interesting people in my dreams.

Last night was no exception. I was watching a really cheap production of The Wizard of Oz in a gymatorium with Whitney and Bethany and maybe my friend Kate from high school. Suddenly I realized that their cast was down by a few people, and Whitney and I had to step in because we had done this show before (we have not done this show before). I was Glinda, and I had to step on pretty much right away, so I performed it in my street clothes and had a blast.

The scene then transitioned to an actual theatre-- I think it was my high school auditorium-- and I saw that the same people were setting up for a performance, so I thought I'd go backstage and see if they needed me again. No such luck. Their regular Glinda was back and nervously getting into costume. I was jealous. I did, however, get the satisfaction of telling her that one could see straight through her skirt. "Darling," I said, "you'll want to put on a slip." I'm never that catty in real life. I think it was because I'd just been grading papers and had all kinds of "Why you do this, single space your goddamn block quotes, why don't you idiots know how to write a thesis yet I have been telling you all semester, oh honey no, ur doin it wrong, what are you talking about?" comments that I couldn't actually put on the papers stored up in my head.

So, as this poor stupid girl was going off to the dressing room, who should come out of the shadows by Kristin Chenoweth? Now, right before I went to bed I had watched some Wicked clips and a Kristin Chenoweth interview from The Boring Sunday Morning Show For Old People, so I know that's where this came from. She was there with Idina Menzel to give some kind of benefit concert or something adjacent to the show, but she'd seen my stand-in performance and thought I was totally way better at the part than Glinda Of The See-Through Skirt. So, she was like, "Come with me," and I was all, "Uh... OKAY."

The rest of the dream consisted of me tagging along after Kristin Chenoweth as she charmed people, sang, and dispensed life advice. The theatre we were in opened out into a mall, and I think we did a little shopping while I tried to seem cool in front of dream!Chenoweth. We left the mall, and waved at Idina who was outside giving autographs. I was relieved that they seemed to get along, if somewhat coolly, because in my head this was the first time the'd seen each other since Wicked. I don't know where the hell we were, but there were mountains in the distance, and we could see this little trail down to a beautiful river, so we decided to hop the fence and go for a walk. Let me tell you what, folks, for such a tiny person, dream!Chenoweth walks fast. I kept having to jog to keep up with her. It turned out we had entered a private golf course, and some old dudes tried to kick us out, but dream!Chenoweth sweet-talked them into letting us stay and just walk around.

The golf course then gave way to a public zoo. Dream!Chenoweth and I walked over to look at the elephants, where we met up with dream!Idina. I remember wondering where her husband and baby were. Dream!Chenoweth had been talking off and on about the wild times backstage at Wicked toward the end of the run and assuring me that she'd never gotten involved in any of the scandalous things I may have heard about (I had heard of no scandalous things). She also alluded to some problems with her management she was having at that time (I don't even know). We stopped to look at the elephants, and she started singing, for some reason, a bit from "The Wizard and I." I think she was talking about being defiant or something, and that led into the song. Well, Idina heard her and joined in, and soon they were both singing and I was singing along as quietly as I could so as not to offend them with my tone-deafness, and then almost everyone in front of the elephants started singing along, and it was great. I told Kristin that I wished more of life could involve random public singing, like in musicals. She agreed.

She then got a phone call from her agent or manager or someone who started making her guess the punchlines of lame jokes like my dad tells. She couldn't get them, but she asked me for the answers and I did get them, because they were like the jokes my dad liked to tell and I could logically deduce the answers based on the formulas I knew.

And then I woke up.

Fin.