Strange Dreams by Andrew Kushnir

Amanda: Have you ever had any strange recurring dreams or nightmares? Or, what is one of your strangest dreams or nightmares?

Andrew: I had two recurring nightmares growing up.

I haven’t had either of them for a long time.The first is the “Can Never Get Home” nightmare. It usually takes place in an overcast, barren, war zone. The roads are all gravel. The buildings are all concrete. They’re broken from bombs and missiles. The ground shakes as more go off. It makes me nauseous. Somewhere in that grey landscape is an orange-yellow school bus. I have to find it. It’s the only way home.

Sometimes I can’t find it. And that’s the nightmare.

Sometimes I find it, but I miss it. And that’s the nightmare.

And sometimes I find it and I manage to get on. But it never takes me home. It just keeps driving and driving and nothing ever looks familiar.

Yay!

The second one is the “Breaking Teeth” nightmare. This one doesn’t have a typical context, just degrees of unpleasantness. There’s the “Well, that’s inconvenient” version all the way to the “Holy goddamn shit what the HELL is happunin tuh muh!!” version where more and more teeth shatter as I cry for help. On the light end, one of my two front teeth becomes a bit wobbly and I flick it off with my tongue. I usually turn to someone in the dream and say “I think I need a dentist. Do you know of one?” On the heavy end, my teeth are splitting down their middles, like when carrots get very dry and crack. I run my tongue over them gently and they smash in my mouth. You know when people vandalize a bus shelter, the glass breaks into those equal pieces. That’s what my mouth fills with. But it’s teeth. My teeth. And they cut up my tongue and gums and my mouth fills with blood.

There we go. I just wrote a Judith Thompson monologue.

Come hear me sing some Paul Simon!

Acting UpStage’s The SOUND OF SILENCE: Thom Allison, Sara Farb, Steven Gallagher, Susan Henley, Andrew Kushnir, Amanda LeBlanc, Jeff Madden, Eliza-Jane Scott, Michael Therriault, Blythe Wilson. Arrangements and Musical Direction by Reza Jacobs.
So get on that bus, Gus! No need to be coy, Roy! 10 Canadian Musical theatre legends. One Night Only. April 20th, 2009. 8pm.
Get to the theatre, Peter!