Larissa and Keri and I were staying in some hotel in Miami, FL, but it wasn't really a hotel. It was patterned like my old elementary school (L-shaped with long hallways) and seemed to be attached to the airport somehow. We were exploring the place when we realized that they were having rehearsals for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying there. Some of the actors would come out of the classrooms from time to time and sit around in plush chairs and rehearse their scenes. Imagine how excited we were when Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette came out! I didn't want to interrupt the rehearsal and thought my chances were slim, but I wanted a photo with them (hopefully together) and thought, "Well, it doesn't hurt to ask, right?" So, I walked through everybody to Dan and sat down and started talking. He seemed uncomfortable at first and then started opening up to me about some very personal stuff. He agreed to a photo and went into a corner where Keri and Larissa were waiting (and started taking photos). I then went to John and he was very polite about the whole thing and immediately agreed to a quick photo. As we were walking I told him I was a HUGE fan of The 10th Kingdom and his reaction told me he wasn't terribly proud of that show [photo courtesy of playbill.com].
Anyway, we took the photos, and then the men went back to their rehearsal.
Well, we went back to our hotel room to check out and I looked at the pictures and my photo of John didn't turn out at all. I was pretty upset, but what could I do? I'd had my chance. I tried interrupting the rehearsal again but the director chased me out and called security on me.
We checked out of the hotel room, and then I realized that I had left an expensive photo in our hotel room. Larissa checked through her back and the only keys she could find were large Alice in Wonderland-type things -- she didn't have the room key anymore. So I left my friends where they were and spent the rest of the dream trying to find someone to open the hotel room.
INSTEAD, I discovered that the hotel was also a mall/Broadway theatre!
As I was walking around, I found stairs leading to a theatre where Sutton Foster was performing. I don't know what show it was supposed to be and I had already, but hadn't had a photo with Sutton, so I went looking for the green room or stage door so I could hopefully catch her while she wasn't onstage (still looking for a janitor, too). I went down a really long, steep staircase, and ran so fast I almost fell down those stairs and barely missed crashing into the usher at the bottom. I don't remember if I got my photo -- I don't think so -- but I did see her looking all gorgeous and long-legged in an emerald-green flapper costume [photo courtesy of stamfordadvocate.com].
I continued on my quest to find someone to open my old hotel room, and came upon another How to Succeed rehearsal. John wasn't friendly at all, but Dan definitely was. He started kind of following me around -- wearing his jacket from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and suddenly he shouted "Stop!" I froze, and peeked back at him and saw he was standing in a spotlight and noticed there was a crowd of people around us. "We're in a play!" I thought. "We're in some play and he has a different girl every night act as his love interest and tonight it's me!" He proceeded -- while I was frozen -- to sing a song about how incredible I was and how much he loved me and then he was singing to me begging me to tell him how much I loved him back. I thought, "How the heck do I respond? If he really loves me outside the context of the play, I don't love him in the same way and have to say 'No' and if it's just a play does he have a different ending for whether I say no or yes?" He ended the song kneeling at my feet, where my still-frozen head could see him.
Then some musical underscoring came up for my reply. I had to say no, so I made up this long, flowery speech (to fill up the music) about how I thought he was a great guy and I'm glad I met him, but I just couldn't give him what he wanted. By the end, I was crying! I overheard an old lady say that my response was waaaay better than any she'd heard the other nights she'd seen the show. Dan was hurt, and sang an angsty song, and then moved onto the scene with "Brotherhood of Man." I guess he rallied ;-) I tried one more time to get a photo with John, but since hearing that I liked The 10th Kingdom, he wasn't very cooperative and I decided to give up.
I left the stage/crowd of people to, again, find a janitor and get the photo from my hotel room. I came upon a place where there were a whole bunch of conveyor belts going up and down (instead of escalators). Dan was behind me and calling to me, but I jumped on a belt going up (lying so that my head was angling down) and rode through a rough-hewn tunnel to the top where Larissa and Keri were waiting.
Turns out, they had caught my performance with Daniel and taken a ton of photos. I was so glad to find out I hadn't imagined the whole incident! They also offered to pay me for the photo I'd left in the hotel room. They just wanted to get out of there, and I guess I can't blame them. I gave up on my quest to get a photo with John and that photo from my hotel room. It was about that time that I woke up.As I lay in bed this morning, I thought it funny that my dream had allusions to all of the plays I saw in NYC:
- Wonderland - keys and conveyor-belt tunnel
- Catch Me if You Can - Miami and the airport
- Billy Elliot - Dan in the spotlight and me turning him down
- How to Succeed - do I even need to spell this out?
- Anything Goes - Sutton Foster and the hotel room
- Harry Potter Exhibition - Dan's Prisoner of Azkaban jacket
- I think the whole elementary room thing came from my walking to my elementary school earlier this week. It's being torn down in the near future, and I just wanted to take a look at the yard. So many happy and not-so-happy memories! I'm sad the building won't be there much longer.
I was also doubly annoyed that it seems all of the notes I'd saved in my draft folder on BlogSpot seem to be gone, as is another post I'd been working on. Grrr! Oh well. At least it's still all in my mind and I can rewrite them. They won't be the same, but my posts never end up the way I think they will anyway!
3 comments:
Oh my gosh, this is fabulous!!! Great dream!
That is SOOO fun! That's a WAY better adventure than we actually had in NYC. Lol. I can't believe Sutton Foster is that skinny in real life. She didn't look ultra skinny on stage.
Everyone definitely looked taller onstage than they were in real life (the girl that played Erma was Larissa's height), and maybe the since everyone on stage was so slender Sutton didn't really stand out in that regard.
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