Designing the Dream Ballet: From Oklahoma!’s Third Auteur to Fish’s Revival and Beyond

Park, Maressa (2022) Designing the Dream Ballet: From Oklahoma!’s Third Auteur to Fish’s Revival and Beyond. DISEGNO: A DESIGNKULTÚRA FOLYÓIRATA, 6 (2). pp. 148-159. ISSN 2064-7778

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Abstract

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s epoch-defining, twice-Pulitzer Prize-winning Oklahoma! is well- known for its integrated non-musical elements, which seamlessly create multimedia cohesion. The most iconic element of this integrated musical is Agnes de Mille’s “Dream Ballet”, a show- stopping choreography and “microcosm” of the show’s plot and the paragon of its namesake genre. The Dream Ballet has undergone a striking evolution in the 2019 Oklahoma! revival at the Circle in the Square Theatre, noted for its subversion of the genre’s expectations. Although choreographer John Heginbotham and director Daniel Fish changed several aspects—including choreography, staging choices, audience immersion, and musical alterations—their refashioning of the Dream Ballet ushered in a new perspective and effect that is vital to the revival’s meaning and success at large. This paper examines the ways in which the two Dream Ballets design themselves around and challenge their respective political environments. Whereas de Mille removes and confine’s Okla- homa!’s unmistakable original horror material, Heginbotham’s Dream Ballet capitalises on the immersion of the audience in a staging of communal sacrifice that plays upon its juxtaposition of community and belonging with community and culpability. Finally, this paper will examine the possibility of using virtual reality to emulate the specific affordances of the 2019 staging.

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