The House of Dreaming

Seen: Melbourne, 2012 | Written: November 2024

They gave us objects at the door - chess piece like creatures, each unique. Mine was... well, the shape escapes me now, but I remember how I used it to explore and unlock the space. I remember too that it wasn't explicitly instructed how or where to use it. But the signals and the invitations were clearly there and able to be understood through a different kind of language.

Twelve years later, what remains is less a story than a collection of spaces that opened into other spaces. A telephone in a small room (or did I borrow that memory from another show, another dream?). An enormous bed where stories were read. A chest - maybe a treasure chest, maybe a toy box - that might have been a doorway to somewhere else.

What I know for certain: I stood in line as an adult, delighted to be attending this "children's" show. Around me, other adults waited too, all of us carrying our own childhood memories of rooms that might contain anything. I remember thinking how different this experience would be with actual children - how their questions might open different doors.

Now, watching my own three-year-old create stories from objects, I understand something new about what Arena Theatre built in that space. They understood that kids naturally read rooms as stories, doors as questions, objects as possibilities.

Was there a moment where we wrote letters? The memory feels right but sits strangely. Furniture in a room I can't quite recall. Some experiences resist being pinned down. They work better as questions than answers.

What remains most clearly is the feeling of that object in my hand - how it made me both reader and key, both audience and participant. How it transformed each space into a kind of physical poetry, each room into a question that needed opening rather than answering.

I wish I could take my children to this house of questions now. Not to show them how to read such spaces - they already know that better than we do - but to remind myself how to read rooms with wonder, how to hold questions like objects, how to let stories remain partly impossible.

A note on memory: These recollections come from a performance seen twelve years ago. Some details may have merged with other theatrical experiences, particularly Then She Fell. But perhaps that's appropriate for a piece about spaces between reality and dream, about rooms that might contain anything. I've purposely not watched the promotional video before writing this so that my memory is authentically limited 😄

But here it is for your enjoyment:

Find out more: The House of Dreaming - arena theatre co