Production

Director's NoteSMALL LIVES/BIG DREAMS was created as a companion piece to THE MEDIUM, a play which asks
the question, "why should we think about the future?" SMALL LIVES/BIG DREAMS asks "why should
we remember the past?" To me the theater is about memory, about remembering the big questions
pertaining to being human. A great play lasts because it asks us to remember some important human
issues. Is it true that if we are unable to remember our past, we have no future? If we lose our memory,
will we lose our humanity?

In approaching a play about memory, I chose to sample freely from the plays of Anton Chekhov. The
characters in Chekhov's plays are haunted by the past while attempting to look tentatively into their future.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Chekhov was experiencing premonitions about the great social changes
that lay ahead. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, we sense the big changes that lie ahead. In light of
these changes, what is the roll of our memories? What do we do with our past?

Blurb"Since Sputnik put the globe in a 'proscenium arch,' and the global village has been transformed into a global theater, the result, quite literally, is the use of public space for 'doing one's thing."' -Marshall Mcluhan