Einstein's Dreams

Based on the international best-seller by Alan Lightman

Adapted by David Gardiner & Ralf Remshardt

Directed by Kari Goetz

Extended! Sep. 16 – Oct. 10, 2010

Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm

Tickets: $24.50

Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts

Winner!

  • Creative Loafing Best of the Bay – Best Lighting Design – Brian Smallheer

Making sense of mortality in the digital age

Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.

"Beautiful.... Very inventive." – Time Out New York

Einstein's Dreams fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905. The work explores the dreams about time that Einstein had during this period. Each dream involves a conception of time.

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Katrina Stevenson and Nic Carter in Jobsite's Einstein's Dreams. (Photo by Brian Smallheer.)

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Some scenarios may involve exaggerations of true phenomena related to relativity, and some may be entirely fantastical. Einstein's Dreams demonstrates the relationship each human being has to time, and thus spiritually affirms Einstein's theory of relativity.

This production plays up the theatricality of dream imagery using a versatile ensemble of nine actors with imagination to spare. Sleight of hand? Roller skates? Stilts? The seeds of the Theory of Relativity? Check!

"Without question, the piece retains most of Lightman's light-footed prose and, in doing so, raises the literary value of this year's Fringe by several notches —not to mention its good-taste level." – TheaterMania.com

Einstein's Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Einstein's Dreams was also the March 1998 selection for National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Book Club. The novel has been used in numerous colleges and universities, in many cases for university-wide adoptions in "common-book" programs.

Discuss the Show

Stick around after the show! There will be a 10-minute talk-back after each performance with the performers.

About the Artists

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(Clock. from top) Jessy Quinones, Greg Milton, Nicole Jeannine Smith, Tia Jemison and Katie Castonguay in Jobsite's Einstein's Dreams. (Photo by Brian Smallheer.)

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Einstein's Dreams was first adapted for the stage by David Gardiner and Ralf Remshardt and performed at the University of Florida in 1996. An off-off-Broadway production of this stage version ran briefly at the New York Fringe Festival in 2001; it has also been performed in Beijing (2009).

Einstein's Dreams features the ensemble of Patrick Bolger, Nic Carter, Katie Castonguay, Slake Counts, Tia Q. Jemison, Greg Milton, Nicole Jeannine Smith, Katrina Stevenson and Jessy Quinones. The show is directed by Kari Goetz with choreography by Katrina Stevenson (who also provides costumes.) Sound design is by David M. Jenkins with scenic and lighting design by Brian Smallheer.

See more about the cast and crew.

"It's a pleasure to witness ... it delights and stimulates and broadens the imagination. Any production that can bring us such wild fantasies with so much grace is abundantly worth seeing." – Creative Loafing

"Directed by Kari Goetz, this ensemble piece was thought provoking and visually surreal ... Goetz, along with Katrina Stevenson's flowing choreography and costume design, presented these Dalí-esque metaphors to great effect ... [a] fascinating play." – Tampa Tribune