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Duke Arts Presents

Torry Bend & Howard L. Craft
Dreaming

Friday, November 22, 2019 | 8:00 pm

Saturday, November 23, 2019 | 8:00 pm

Sunday, November 24, 2019 | 7:00 pm

Rubenstein Arts Center | von der Heyden Studio Theater


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Award-winning puppet artist and Associate Professor of Theater Studies at Duke, Torry Bend, collaborates with Howard L. Craft, the lauded poet, playwright, and arts educator who created the first African-American superhero radio serial, The Jade City Pharaohto reimagine an iconic American cartoon. Bend, who premiered Love’s Infrastructure at Duke Performances in 2014, joins forces with Craft on Dreaming: a new theatrical work that investigates the legacy of influential artist Winsor McCay and his famed comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran from 1905 to 1911 in The New York HeraldDreaming confronts overtly racist imagery in McCay’s work, using puppetry to tell the story of McCay’s cast of characters on the event of his death; the characters must reconcile the fame they each found as stereotypes. Having first appeared as a work-in-progress at Sheafer Lab Theater, the final production of Dreaming debuts at the von der Heyden Studio Theater before its New York premiere at La MaMa in 2020.

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CONTENT WARNING: For your consideration, Dreaming includes some adult language, racially charged imagery, and instances of potentially unsettling loud noises.



“[A]n unexpected mitzvah that shakes the urban blinders off our eyes and forces us to see the uncanny beauty and terror of where we live...”

The New York Times (on Torry Bend's The Paper Hat Game)