3.5 of 4 Stars - Life's a ‘Dream' come true in an enchanting Teatro Vista production. Marvin Quijada's charming comedy is simply a tour-de-force - Jack Helbig, Chicago Sun Times 5/18/23

"What happens when you fall in love with someone who only exists in your dreams?

This is the question Chicago actor, writer and physical comedian Marvin Quijada asks in his beguiling 90-minute play, "The Dream King," receiving its world-premiere production at Teatro Vista.

"The Dream King'' tells the story of Sam, a simple man who lives a nothing life. He lives alone. He has a boring job. Every evening he does the same things - eats dinner, watches TV, goes to bed. But every night, the moment he closes his eyes, he enters an amazing dream world full of fantastic creatures, created on a stage through a combination of projections, props, puppets and an array of costumed performers. He hangs out with a moon man. He swims with a school of playful fish. He frolics with odd bird-like animals in a garden of plants with flowers that look like feet. One night Sam meets and falls in love with a woman with gold shoes and a silver crown. (She is literally a falling star.) Sadly, he can only be with her when he is asleep.

From that moment on, his life - both waking and dreaming - spins out of control. She demands he spend all his time with her. His dreamtime friends become jealous of all the time he spends with his new girlfriend and turn on him. And it gets worse, but I don't want to be a spoiler.

Quijada, who stars as the show's hapless hero, is credited in the program as the show's "creator." But this show is clearly a Chicago-style group effort, with two directors, Teatro Vista ensemble-member Sandra Marquez and Physical Theater Festival Chicago co-founder Alice da Cunha, a large crew of talented designers (costumers, set designers, puppet designers) and nimble, clever physical comedians. Together they have crafted a fast-paced, highly polished show full of eye-popping visuals - colorful costumes courtesy of Caitlin McLeod's surreal variations on contemporary fashions; the whimsical puppets of Mike Oleon operated by a team of puppeteers; and unearthly props designed by Saskia Bakker, including layers of diaphanous curtains on which are projected dream-like films. All are presented on Joe Schermoly's surreal, cave-like set.

"The Dream King" is performed like a silent movie, almost entirely without words, and as was the practice in those early cinema presentations, the show uses title cards - here in English, Spanish and Polish. (The performances are so evocative you don't really need the titles.)

This is not surprising. Quijada was a member of the ensemble of the Silent Theatre Company, which specialized in doing silent movie-like plays, (including his charming two-hander "The Duelling Gentlemen" in 2014, in which he also starred).

Every member of the talented ensemble plays a part in the success of the show. Ashlyn Lozano brings her own quirky, comic energy to the role of the shooting star-turned-dream girlfriend. She also brings a depth and freshness to a character that could easily be an idealized - or demonized - mere projection of a man's fantasies. Lozano's star girl is her own person who, by being a real woman in a dream world, actually helps the sweet, but immature Sam, grow up.

And Jean Claudio excels in various supporting roles, including a hilarious, smug French waiter. Claudio is listed in the program as "a circus and theater performer" and that experience shows in their Chaplin-esque wit and grace.

There may be no dialogue in the show, but it is far from silent. Behind all of the action on stage is an intricate soundtrack, a pastiche of sound effects, original tunes and copious quotations from opera, movie scores and popular tunes. The program credits Quijada, Matthew Chapman, Elliot Taggart and Ethan T.Parcell with the making of this score (Chapman also gets a sound design credit), and hats off to them. (Despite being billed as a "silent musical," no one sings or lip syncs.)

Reportedly, Quijada has been working on "The Dream King" for many, many years, eventually sidelined by the pandemic shutdowns. He has said that he used his time in lockdown to refine the show. It was worth the wait. This amazing production, by turns charming and playful, bittersweet and deeply moving, could not be better. Or more satisfying"

Teatro Vista's The Dream King Takes Us on a Magical Musical Silent Adventure - Nancy Bishop, Third Coast Review 5/19/23

"In The Dream King by Teatro Vista, creator Marvin Quijada as Sam performs a magical if familiar story in movement and original music. It's a "silent musical " about a man in love with the woman of his dreams, performed with projections on a constantly changing stage. Eight other performers join Quijada for the adventure, constantly changing as well, and often wearing outrageous headgear or masks.

The Dream King's dreams are generated by sleep, of course, and Quijada sleeps on a cleverly designed vertical bed, on which he falls asleep instantly, waking refreshed (or not) and ready to go to his office. When he's awake, Sam is stuck in the mundane life of a corporate worker. In his dream world, he's the King. We are never quite sure when he‘s awake or when he's dreaming but it doesn't matter because we easily follow his adventures, clowning or comedic fighting with his cohorts-and meeting sweet with the woman he falls in love with (Ashlyn Lozano). She may be a princess or a diva, but she arrives and slips away mysteriously-until the end.

If the idea of a "silent musical" intrigues you, I promise that you will not be disappointed by taking the journey to the Chopin Theatre to see The Dream King. Your 80 minutes will fly by.

Marvin Quijada is the creator of this fanciful choreographed vision, directed by Sandra Marquez and Alice da Cunha. In addition to Quijada and Lozano, the performers are Chih-Ju Cheng, Jean Claudio, Liz Krane, Ayssette Muñoz, Claudia Quesada, Jordan Reinwald and Tommy Rivera-Vega.

During the play, projections change the nature of the stage and its backdrop, and are preceded by clips of silent films such as those made by Buster Keaton in the 1920s. Some dialogue is projected on a side stage screen in English, Spanish and Polish. Projection design is by Liviu Pasare. Original music is by Matthew Chapman and Quijada; Chapman is responsible for sound design. Costumes and the glorious headgear are by Caitlin McLeod. Puppetry design is by Mike Oleon. Liv Sullam is stage manager.

Marvin Quijada or "Silent Marvin" is a musician, clown, mime and digital artist. See examples of his work and style at silentmarvin.com.

The Dream King by Teatro Vista continues at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St., through June 18. The play runs about 80 minutes with no intermission. Showtimes are Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are $45 and are available at www.teatrovista.org. Student tickets are available for every performance for $20 with a valid student ID. Teatro Vista's Teatro For All program offers a limited number of affordable tickets to those in the community who need them most, on a first-come, first-served basis, for $20 per ticket"

 

The Dream King delivers heartbreaking hilarity: Teatro Vista's "silent musical" finally gets its world premiere. - by Kimzyn Campbell, Chicago Reader 5/24/23

"Silent Marvin is living in a silent world that is just as monotonous as ours. The daily grind of shuffling papers at his office job and flipping channels at night leaves him unsatisfied. Where is the purpose? Fortunately for Silent Marvin, he has his dreams. Each night he enters a Dadaesque landscape where flowers are made of feet, and underwater adventures are disturbed only by his pal the moon (and cronies) wanting to drink a little something out of a flask to liven up the party.

Enter a falling star, aka the girl. She is riveting and adored. Silent Marvin is in love. The pursuit, mingling with the slapstick joys of physical theater, blend together to tell a love story as old as time, full of hilarious twists and turns. Who knew the moon got around on Heelys, for instance? Or that a falling star could dance while a squidlike creature plays a compelling romantic ditty on saxophone?

Billed as a silent musical, The Dream King (codirected by Sandra Marquez and Alice da Cunha) has been a long-standing dream of Marvin Quijada's. On stage before the show, Teatro Vista's co-artistic directors Lorena Diaz and Wendy Mateo reminisced about how Quijada was famous for performing parts of Dream King at parties. He was staging it just before the pandemic halted progress. Fortunately for Quijada, Teatro Vista took it on, adding their signature high level of production value (scenography by Joe Schermoly, projection design by Liviu Pasare, and puppetry by Mike Oleon were on point) to this already deliriously charming tale.

But it is Quijada who truly delivers. With a seemingly elastic facial range, his expressions can bring one to tears of mirth or mercy. Brushing his teeth? Hilarious. Looking for his missing loved one? Your heart will crack. Supporting physical theater practitioners complete the dream team in The Dream King, including Jean Claudio, Chih-Jou Cheng, Liz Krane, Ayssette Muñoz, Claudia Queseda, Jordan Reinwald, Tommy Rivera-Vega, and Ashlyn Lozano as the falling star".

 

Subconscious romance: Marvin Quijada's The Dream King finally becomes a reality with Teatro Vista - Alejandro Riera, Chicago Reader 5/11/23

"What is it like to be a character in a dream?," asks the protagonist of Waking Life (2001), Richard Linklater's first stab at rotoscope animation. The question lies at the heart of clown, mime, and musician Marvin Quijada's The Dream King, Teatro Vista's new production codirected by ensemble member Sandra Marquez and Physical Theater Festival Chicago cofounder Alice da Cunha (I worked as an on-and-off publicist of the festival for several years). In fact, the movie's meditations on the nature (and reality) of dreams led Quijada to ask if, as one character in the movie claims, you can meet someone interesting in your dreams, what would happen if you fell in love with someone in your dreams?

"That's like the most magical and also the most tragic because you can't see the person you fell in love with in real life, which is where you want to see them. You only see them in your dreams," said Quijada during a Zoom interview prior to the play's first tech rehearsal.

"I decided to tell this story physically," he continued. "I'm better at writing with my body than with my words. It's kind of like a dancer choreographing. Essentially, I just need a mirror. I create with music as inspiration: movie soundtracks, classical, stuff that doesn't have words. And I just start improvising with my body and seeing what stories come out."

When he found out that Marquez had a keen interest in the mystical, in the surreal, and in dreams (sharing her dreams with her mother and grandmother, and vice versa, played a huge role in her growing up, according to Marquez, in a separate Zoom interview), Quijada went to her apartment with a boombox and a flip chart full of stick figures illustrating the movements and set design. "So, for about an hour he acted out every single part and explained the whole thing with the music," recalled Marquez. "He was so fun to watch. I don't give standing ovations easily but that afternoon I stood in my living room and gave him one. He sold me on the idea."

The Dream King was originally scheduled to be part of Teatro Vista's 2019-2020 season. In fact, they had rehearsed for two days when the state of Illinois declared a complete shutdown of all public activities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I continued working on the piece because I had nothing else to do," said Quijada. "It just made the piece that more personal, which makes this whole process that more terrifying, even though it is a comedy, and there is a lot of clowning in it. To me, some of the best clowning and some of the best art comes from when it is really personal. Not that it wasn't personal in 2020, but that aspect is more developed.

"I was calling it a silent play, then. But then it dawned on me that this was a musical since there's music the whole time, just like a silent movie, so why not call it a silent musical? It's like a silent movie on stage, an homage to silent movies," he added.

"We were really disappointed with the shutdown," said Marquez. "Then we thought we actually learned a lot from those few days. But there wasn't really a guarantee it could happen again."

In its mix of movement, physical comedy, music, and even silent film projections, The Dream King promises to be unlike anything Teatro Vista has ever produced. Known for staging more traditional (if you can call it that) works by the likes of José Rivera, Nilo Cruz, Tanya Saracho, and Kristoffer Diaz, and for producing such Chicago-centric stories as Sandra Delgado's critically acclaimed and award-winning La Havana Madrid, The Dream King follows the remit of artistic directors Lorena Diaz and Wendy Mateo of exploring, and exploding, the boundaries of stagecraft. In the last two years, and in response to the pandemic, the company produced a moving graphic novel (Quijada's Detective Q, The Sharpest Line) and two seasons of a serial fiction podcast (Gabriel Ruiz's The Fifth World) as part of that vision.

"Wendy and Lorena could see that it was a big dream, that we really wanted to bring it to life. And they were willing to say, ‘We are going to do it, let's really commit to it and give it whatever it needs,'" said Marquez.

The cast changed over time since not everybody was available for this second go-round. Elements were also added to the play. Even during the first tech rehearsal last week, when actors, directors, and technicians stepped onto the stage of the Chopin Theater for the first time, changes were still being made.

"We had to build a strong scaffold and I was very particular about that. That may have driven some of our artists nuts," said Marquez. "But I understood that Marvin gave us a very distinct, clear outline. We looked at it as the structure of the building. The foundation was there, all the structural points were there and we wanted to make sure they were solid . . . Because it's a story told without words, the physical language and the physical marks are very particular. Otherwise, we would lose the clarity of the story reaching the audience."

"I've had to learn to share my baby [with both directors]," said Quijada. "Sandra has a cerebral way of working and Alice, a physical one. Having both of those minds guide the play has been a blessing because they ask questions that are really meant to inform how the piece will be told in the clearest, most concise way. Ultimately, it's about telling a good story."

Now his baby is going to college; at least, that's how Quijada sees it. "It's just like, ‘Oh, my God. Are they gonna be protected? Are people gonna like them?' All the jokes have always been in my head. And so I'm just curious how they'll translate. Once there is an actual audience, what moments will land the dramatic journey? It's a mixed bag of emotions, which is great!"

 

"Inside the strange and universal art of the ‘silent musical' " - Julie Binswager, WBEZ Chicago, 6/8/23

Marvin Quijada's dark and whimsical new show "The Dream King" could be one of the most unique pieces of theater this summer on Chicago stages.

Marvin Quijada's whole body fills with electricity as he jumps out of a vertical bed on the stage of the Chopin Theater in Chicago's West Town. In the dreamworld that he has created in an otherwise small theater, he grins from ear to ear, signals delight through spirit fingers, looks wide-eyed at his new surroundings - and doesn't say a word.

Quijada, 41, has spent the past decade creating and pitching his silent musical, The Dream King, which runs through June 18. The musical, which he stars in, promises to be one of the more unique pieces of theater on Chicago stages this summer.

And if you're scratching your head, wondering "What's a silent musical?" then he's at least got you curious.

Like Keaton and Chaplin-era silent movies, The Dream King gets rid of talking and relies on music, props, title cards, slapstick comedy and over the top expression to convey its message. "With The Dream King, for me, removing the words just made it different," Quijada said. "I like different. I think different is interesting."

Staged by the Latino theater company Teatro Vista, the musical revolves around a man named Sam, who falls for a woman who only exists in his dreams. The idea came to Quijada while watching the 2001 film Waking Life directed by Richard Linklater. In the movie, a character has profound conversations when sleeping. "I was just like, ‘Wow, that's so interesting,' " Quijada said. "And then the question that occurred to me was what if you fell in love in your dreams? Which sounds tragic and incredible."

Quijada was born in Highland Park and got his start in theater at Columbia College. His friends were auditioning for a silent play, so he decided to join in. Immediately, he felt connected using his body and music to express a message and emotion. "I'm just a better writer with my body, very similar to how a dancer choreographs to music," he said. So began a theater career in miming and clowning - albeit not necessarily in the traditional sense. "I don't have a red nose. I don't do clown makeup," he said. "I did it in the past, and I started breaking out."

Sandra Marquez, an early collaborator who co-directed the musical, recalls Quijada's first pitch to her. "He came over to my apartment and set up his boombox and played all the parts," she said. "It was seamless. I gave him a standing ovation at the end of the one-hour pitch."

The Dream King isn't afraid to get weird. Whenever Quijada's character Sam falls asleep, ​he awakens from the droll and routine real world into an imaginative dreamscape - not so unlike Dorothy taking her first steps into technicolor Oz. Sam's dreams are fantastical. They're filled with sea creatures toting salami sandwiches, a whisky swigging moon man sporting gym shoes with wheels, flowers that bloom feet and faceless monsters.

"He is one of Chicago's biggest talents in theater," said co-director Alice da Cunha, who got involved with the project through a workshop for The Dream King in 2018. "It's always astonishing to see his endless inventiveness - the rigor and the professionalism."

Silent theater is not a typical genre. But it is a genre that plays into the stage's greatest strengths - physicality, playfulness and imagination. Still, at times, getting it to stage took convincing. "People had a hard time going, ‘Wait what? How does this work?' " Marquez said. "But I was just determined that we were going to do this."

Then the pandemic hit. Quijada had to wait and start the process of building a show as COVID closed theaters and halted productions. The delay ultimately gave the creator extra time to workshop and reflect on his story. Although it is fantastical and funny, The Dream King draws inspiration from difficult personal subjects, including alcoholism.

"Booze and the notion of just trying to escape real world problems with alcohol, that element definitely elevated during and after the pandemic," he said. "It's a scary beast. And to me, the drinking is about self-reflection, self-discovery, gaining confidence within yourself and battling your own demons."

Lately, a lot of Latino theater has focused on immigration and other topical political issues. While these narratives are important, da Cunha believes more types of out-of-the box stories from Latino artists like The Dream King should be explored and funded. "I didn't grow up in the U.S.," she said. "For me, Latinx is everything ... I grew up in two countries where I was the majority. I don't see that limitation."

What's more, the fact that The Dream King doesn't rely on words makes it universal. The limited dialogue in the show appears on title cards that are translated in English, Spanish and Polish - the three most spoken languages in Chicago.

Quijada's parents immigrated to the United States from El Salvador before he was born, so English is not their native language. "I've been in Shakespeare plays. And my dad is like, ‘The costumes were amazing,' " he explained. "A lot of times, they don't really understand it. Sometimes people that speak English don't even understand what Shakespeare is trying to say."

Silent theater eliminates this barrier. "It's like a universal language: physicality, dance. It doesn't matter where you're from. Music is music. Movement is movement. And movement and music can be interpretive. So whatever you come and get out of it, that's incredible."

If you go: Teatro Vista's The Dream King runs through June 18 at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St. Tickets are $45 and $20 for students with ID.

From the Directors:

This is a story of a man who falls in love with the woman of his dreams while in his dreams. It is an epic and delightful journey of a psyche in revolt todl through movement, clowing, physical comediy, silent film style projections, a dynamic musical score adn a healthy dose of wild imagination.