WINNER - FIRST PRIZE, 1995 ICI/STC YOUNG PLAYWRIGHT OF THE YEAR AWARD. Judged by Nick Enright, Katherine Thompson and Wayne Harrison.

WRITTEN - November 1994, revised with addition of 2 monologues Oct. 1995.
First Performed December 14th 1994, Workshop Performance by Roundabout Theatre and Community Projects

GIRL - Andrea Moggridge
BOY - Nigel McPaul

Subsequently Performed November 1995, Wharf Theatre Sydney, by the Sydney Theatre Company. Staged Readings of winning plays of the 1995 ICI/STC Young Playwright of the Year Award.

GIRL - Danielle Carter
BOY - Damon Herriman

Other notable productions

March / April 1996 by Roundabout Theatre and Community Projects (RTCP) as part of the 1996 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Fresh Fruit Theatre, Adelaide, and South Australian schools tour.

GIRL - Natasha Gorsevski
BOY - Ryan Paranthoiene

This is the big one, the one which I owe my playwriting career to. It is as near to my perception of the perfect teenage play as I will ever get.

The initial rush of inspiration came in November 1994, after seeing Michael Gow's `Sweet Phoebe'. It was not so much the content of the play (inspired by many different experiences that everyone can empathise with) but the method which inflamed my imagination. The revelation was : I can write a whole play in exposition ! It was a release, a rebellion against many of the things I had been told since I began writing plays, namely 1) Stop writing plays as if you were writing stories 2) Stop being so lyrical, real people don't talk like that, and 3) Drama is 50% action, 50% words. In Am I Your Dream ? there are both real voices and lyricism. There is only about 5% movement (something I've always found difficult and another reason why radio is so appealing). I discovered a formula that suited me perfectly, and suited the material perfectly. The material was taken from a few different chapters from my novel NOT THAT LONG - the major one was written more as a short story in the first person on the novel's theme of transience, and can easily function as one. It's a very insular, well-constructed tale with a classic dramatic structure which is more or less just `told' by the characters. I don't like characters addressing the audience within a usual play, but in this case, it was perfect. It was totally in line with the reaching of a new emotional core in the subject matter too. Most important of all, it had no message, no moral. It was simply a situation with which everyone could sympathise - teenagers as experience, adults as nostalgia. Ultimately, it is my fondest wish to write plays about teenagers but which all audiences can enjoy, and which is not issue based.

It was first performed, as legend has it, as a moved reading in front of a good ten or so people, as part of the results of a playwriting workshop - in fact, it almost didn't get performed at all (one of the actors left his script at home and he ended up reading off one with a giant shoe-print in the middle of it, obscuring some of the text !). Everyone seemed to feel the impact of it and recognised that it was a new kind of play for me. The play, and the story itself, was written in one sitting. The script that arrived at the STC as an entry for the ICI/Sydney Theatre Co. Young Playwright of the Year differed very little from the original (I gave it a shine-up before sending it), and all that has ever been changed in it is a quickening of the pace as the pinnacle is reached (the `Say something !' bit) by making the lines shorter, a result of a suggestion in the STC workshops and an effective change. Other than that (and its shortening for radio, which is another story), I have always emphatically resisted any other alteration. It was written in the perfect way, in a fit of passion and before the idea was allowed to stale. Most playwrights agree that even if a play is revised, this train of passion that originally inspired the DON'T CALL ME SONNY BOY is a good example of this - and this is the sort of play for which this method works).

I thought little of the entry until the unbelievable call came that I had won. First place.

Even thought I detest one sentence paragraphs, that was the only way I could think of presenting it. There is nothing more important and significant than the final comfirmation of the fact that you do have talent; that you do have something worth working on. This was the beginning of my career. All of a sudden, important people like Nick Enright and Wayne Harrison were telling me what a future I had. It all exists in my mind as a big mellifluous blur, the big explosion where it all began. It's nice to be toast of the town.

Thus also began the play's illustrious performance history. I find the script delightfully adaptable; there has not been a single production which has not provoked my thoughts and made me see it in a new light. Damon Herriman played a sweet and comical Boy (one of my favourite interpretations and who later played the main character in the radio play HEBEPHRENIA) in Wayne Harrison's excellent and successful production (the audible `ohhh' from the capacity Wharf Theatre audience when they realised the two were not going to get together). Not long after, Roundabout Theatre and Community Projects proposed a production to travel to the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 1996. Simultaneously, a production was mounted by the Department of Education for its drama camp. Several other propositions, such as one by ATYP, had to be rejected. To extend the play for the Adelaide production, I added the two monologues, which were the only solution without altering the play itself (I can't think of anything worse than cluttering it up NOT THAT LONG (and from a similar story), the other was written in late 1995, and in my post-award crisis (apparently this is quite a phenomena) was incredibly difficult and has never satisfied me totally. However, the Adelaide experience was unforgettable. Audiences were as good as could be expected from an unknown company and writer competing with three hundred other plays, but the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. It was in the schools tour that I had my greatest experiences - taking theatre to kids who would usually not be interested. There was nothing more amazing than watching the reactions of these kids, and having some come up to us afterwards and ask `How do I get involved in something like this ?!'. This production returned in April for a Sydney season. In a new production, it played Cafe Basilica in April 1996, in a radically different context and interpretation. The production was good, but the fact that the largely `inner-city' audience looked upon it more as a kind of kitsch troubled me. The play is and always will be a celebration of being a teenager, and a way of remembering what it is to be a teenager. There have been other productions - most notably, its debut on radio this year, and its instrumental position in introducing me to radio, a medium for which it is ideally suited. The play is still a favourite and a triumph.

AM I YOUR DREAM?'s artistic success can be summed up for me by the reaction of an audience member from Bordertown High School, a tiny town some three hours out of Adelaide, and the whole school turned out to see the play. He wrote on his evaluation sheet : AM I YOUR DREAM? is the best thing that ever happened to Bordertown, because it cares how we feel.' Things like that make it all worthwhile.

Read the character guide to `Am I Your Dream ?'

by Camille Scaysbrook

CAST (1 male, 1 female)

`BOY' : The kind of guy you see in every mall. Not adverse to a good night out or a prank but with an extra touch of sensitivity that sets him apart from the others. On the outside he demonstrates the machismo and self-assurance required from him by society, but is quite emotional and tentative underneath.

`GIRL' : Perhaps a little more worldly and mature than the Boy, but romantic - minded. More of a `dreamer' than a `doer'. She is more philosophical rather than merely inquisitive as the Boy is and thus more likely to delve deeper into what she sees around her, and be more reflective about her experiences.

Both characters are around 16 years old, average Sydney South suburbanites, with an identical inability to `break the ice'.

SETTING

The play is set in an indefinite place. Two chairs are required for the boy and girl, who are independent of one another and have no knowledge of each others' presence. Therefore only a neutral, unobtrusive set is required (e.g. a black background and black chairs). As the play opens we see no more of them emotionally than if we passed them in a shopping centre. However, as the play progresses they proceed to show a little more of themselves.

AM I YOUR DREAM ?

SCENE 3 - The Girl and Boy sit on stage left and stage right respectively. They have no knowledge of each others' presence, exist independent of one another, and speak only to the audience.

BOY - It was at the beginning of summertime, one of those hot squeaky days where everyone seems to float along by on a bed of wet steam.

GIRL - God, it was one of the best days I'd had for ages - you know, one of those days where everything is just fine, just so perfect? the kind of day I want everyone to remember when one day they are caught up with stupid things like buying Valentines Day cards for people they don't even love.

BOY -We - Kane and me - were at the shopping centre at Miranda. You know, it's incredible, that place, it's like a living organism powered by people.

GIRL - I have to admit, we were acting pretty stupid, you know how you get at these things. Annoying for the sake of being annoying. Chucking straw papers at each other, yelling and swearing real loud, making Coke come out of our nostrils just for the fun of it and so people will look at you.

BOY & GIRL - We were going to see `Reality Bites' at the cinema there.

BOY - I was going because I like Winona Ryder. Kane was going because he likes the soundtrack. Kane was sitting at one of those tables telling me how he called his goldfish Hannibal because it was psychotic and it ate all the other fish and left their fins at the bottom of the fish tank. I could hear the kids behind us laughing when he told it too. These are the sort of things you overhear in shopping centres .

GIRL - Malls drive me so mad sometimes though. I mean, there's always all these gorgeous guys there, everywhere. And you give them the eye as you go up the escalator or as you look down on them from the next level. And they give you the eye back and giggle and whisper to their friends. Then you follow each other places, catch sight of each other beside the pillars or using the public phone.

BOY - And then you go off to throw McDonalds pickles at the store windows.

GIRL - You might catch sight of those guys, talking to someone they know or tying their shoelace, or brushing their hair out of their face with their fingers. But that's all you'll do. Watch and wonder.

BOY - This is what I mean - why don't they invent rules so everyone knows how to get to the next step ? Why do they only teach us how to do stupid pointless things like the Pythagoras Theorem and how to tell igneous rocks from sedimentary ones ? They never tell us anything we really need to know. We've got to work that stuff out for ourselves. It fully sucks, I swear!

GIRL - It in was one of those cinemas that look like they're made completely out of old 70's carpet. You know, the whole thing of king sized beverage holders and kids hanging out with their feet up on the seat in front of them, because they're on holidays just like us.

BOY - Groups of guys like me and Kane, some thinking they're legends and hassling girls, other ones sitting seriously by themselves with Sonic Youth T - shirts on skinny framed bodies and dyed black hair covering their eyes.

GIRL - There's this girl and a guy together, doing everything wrong, spilling their Coke and smiling uneasily at the flat popcorn on the carpet.

BOY - Groups of heaps of screeching bimbos with voices like your Doc Martens on lino tiles, eyeing us off and us eyeing them back because we were in a holiday mood. The funnest thing to do is take a bunch of Gummi Worms in with you, suck them awhile, then ditch them at the screen. They go SPCHGT! and crawl down the screen leaving a trail of your very own saliva. Then all those girls go `Ewwww!' and giggle some more, and looking at me and Kane like we're members of Nirvana or something. Anyhow, the lights go down and everyone makes ridiculous comments during the trailers and the advertisements.

GIRL - .... Keanu Reeves' new hair cut in `Speed'. All the girls behind us going `Eeee' when Johnny Depp comes on screen. Then the movies really come on, the Greater Union ad rolls, the lights go completely off. The movie begins. We've got crappy seats so we sneak up the aisle ...

BOY - Then this group of girls move up just near us. There's about four of them. But, oh my God, there's this one girl - oh, my gosh - you know how sometimes, late at night when you can't sleep and you invent your perfect partner in your head? This was that girl.

GIRL - I sat down at the front, and there was this guy there. My God ... I just wanted to run my fingers through his hair.

BOY - Long, long dark autumn coloured hair. Pale oval face, eyes like chips of blue glass, dark eyebrows, curving into question marks. And this great T-shirt !

GIRL - Beautiful shoulders. God, he had nice shoulders. And a nice face. Serious but not serious, you know ?

BOY - There was one thing. I couldn't quite see the name of the band on it. I knew it began with an `R' - oh, if it was only R.E.M, everything would be so perfect.

GIRL - I caught his eye just as I sat down in the front row - the cinema was nearly full - I had no idea what I was supposed to do, run over and say `Listen, you wanna spend the rest of your life with me?' I mean, I couldn've done that, but I was too scared.

BOY - If I was my friend Morgan I could've plonked myself right next to her - and I mean properly, not scrunched up in the corner, I mean practically on her lap - and start chatting to her. He might not actually get her, he's not a super human babe magnet, even Morgan has his limits. But at least he can just launch straight in the middle of a conversation and say things that don't make him sound like a demented halfwit drunk. I can't do that. Just go up and talk to a girl like that. God, I wish I could do that though, I really wish I could.

GIRL - I know people who would do that, too. Don't they annoy the crap out of you? These people who can go up to anyone and next minute they're practically married to them? I mean, there's me who goes all by the book, perfect timing, perfect subtlety, not too forward - and it's the cows who roll up and sayy a couple of quotes from `Wayne's World' and end up with a guy in each pocket.

GIRL - I enjoyed the movie a lot, it was a good movie - but there I was, watching the movie with one eye, staring at everything this guy did with the other ; the way his hand curved over the seat, haw his mouth curved when he laughed....

BOY - .... What rings she was wearing on her fingers, the way she sipped her Coke, what she did when Ethan Hawke came onscreen, whether or not she mouthed the words of the songs....

GIRL - .... It's amazing how much you can learn about someone just by watching them, listening to the way they speak or the way their face crumples up when they're talking to someone ...