Watch An Excerpt From The Dream Inside Us

Description

The Dream Inside Us is a solo autobiographical performance of one woman’s reckoning with the climate/biodiversity crisis.  Fifteen brief dispatches trace her journey to the Mongolian desert to bear witness to the nearly extinct Gobi bear, to San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point Superfund site where residents fight deadly toxins, to the “Great Burning” of the Civil War which her own pacifist Mennonite ancestors barely escaped, and to downtown San Francisco where she helps to shut down the banks who fund the climate catastrophe.  The Dream Inside Us is accompanied by a post-show discussion that includes a handout of concrete actions that people can take now to restore, renew, and re-create the earth we all cherish.

Booking

The Dream Inside Us is a 50-minute performance that is ideal for your theatre, conference, classroom, or as a special event fundraiser.  It may be presented LIVE in person, LIVE on Zoom, or on film and is followed by a post-show discussion.  

The Dream has been performed at the Los Angeles Women’s Festival, MarshStream’s 2020 International Solo Fest and live at San Francisco’s Dance Mission Theater, the Sierra Club, and university classrooms.

Workshops

The Dream Workshop is also available for participants to create and share their own stories of upheaval, survival, and endurance in these times. Tailored to your needs.

Quotes

...a torrent of strength and vulnerability, shaking us with humor and dread.  It is such a pleasure to be taken on a ride with her.  From past, to future, to a now that becomes urgent and vivid as she focuses our attention upon the nature of what we’ve done to nature.  Molly Kittle, curator, STORY, San Francisco

...Mesmerizing...Life-changing... Stephanie Weisman, Artistic Director, The Marsh, San Francisco

 Your piece left me speechless... incredibly powerful and something that must be seen widely... one brave, fierce woman standing alone for an hour speaking a truth about which most of us are desperate to distract ourselves.  David Trachtenberg, architect

..very moving...emotionally powerful...a very important presentation at an important time,...more people, especially youth, would benefit from experiencing it... Andrée Thompson, Instructor, Laney College

Background

2018. I’m traveling in a Land Rover across the vast and inhospitable Gobi Desert. There are no roads, no mile markers, no signs, and no GPS to guide us. Yet somehow our Mongolian park ranger and guide Perudorja leads us to the wilderness preserve where the last remnants of mazaalai — the Gobi grizzly bear — teeters on the brink of extinction. Will they survive, these feisty little bears subsisting on wild rhubarb root and grasshoppers? 

1861. The Civil War is raging. My great-grandmother Suzanna is fleeing Virginia to Hagerstown, Maryland where she hopes to reunite with her husband. She rides between the Union and Confederate armies in a spring wagon with a baby in her arms. She arrives at Harper’s Ferry where she need only cross the Shenandoah River. But the bridge is burning.

2019. I join Extinction Rebellion, a group of environmental activists, in closing down Montgomery Street, San Francisco’s financial hub, demanding that banks and corporations divest from fossil fuels. I protest as a member of the “Red Rebels”, a procession of red-robed individuals in white face who move slowly in silence.

From these divergent “fronts” I’ve produced a series of reports that tell the story of my attempt to make sense out of the senseless – a climate catastrophe of our own making that has arisen during the span of a lifetime. 

My hope is that The Dream Inside Us will inspire others to articulate their own narratives of longing, grief, hope, and fear about the biggest threat we have ever faced as humans.  And then to act, because action is possible only when we find the opposite of despair: courage—the courage to act without knowing the outcome of our actions.

Helen is an active member of Extinction Rebellion, a global nonviolent movement to compel the world to address the climate and ecological emergency.  She recently created The Dream Inside Us, a solo performance work that explores her own response to the climate crisis.

Black Swan’s other productions, which Helen directed and co-wrote include: The Prepared Table: A Feast of Foods, Live Performance, and Stories from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the FOB (Forward Operating Base of the US Military), a multi-media performance event about the post 9/11 wars and Heart of America: Stories from the New Ellis Island, a dance/aerial arts work based on immigrant oral histories collected by children.  The stories were part of The Ancestor Project, an innovative arts and literacy program that Black Swan brought to over 6,000 Bay Area public schoolchildren over a five-year period.  

Prior to founding Black Swan, Ms. Stoltzfus was a co-artistic director, playwright, and performer for the internationally-acclaimed ensemble A Traveling Jewish Theatre. Their original works for the stage were produced worldwide, including the Los Angeles Theatre Festival, the Kampnagel Hamburg Sommer Festival, the Fool's Festival in Copenhagen, and the Baltimore International Theater Festival, traveling the globe from Toronto to Oslo, and from Prague to Appalachia. 

In addition to her stage work, Ms. Stoltzfus co-wrote and starred in Send Word, Bear Mother, a film adaptation by Crown Sephira Productions of her solo play, Like A Mother Bear.  Bear explores the intersection of ecology, myth, and healing in one’s woman’s journey through illness.   It won the 1998 Best Docudrama award from the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, and an award for creative excellence from the Earthvision Environmental Film and Video Festival.  

Helen’s works have been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, California Council of the Arts, the City of Oakland/ Cultural Funding Program, the Djerassi Foundation, the Fleishhacker Family Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Swig Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, and the Zellerbach Family Foundation,  among others.