Daedream Feels The Love

Lucy Gellman Photos.

In a hallway at James Hillhouse High School, students were shape-shifting into movie characters, one costume change at a time. Beneath a spray of felt and polyester, Anaya Cartagena became a Pixar-style cowgirl, completing her outfit with a tiny lasso and wide-brimmed hat that looked ready for a rodeo. Nearby, Gloria Locoh tried to get a handle on her nerves, wandering past a tiny Buzz Lightyear in the process. Down the hall, Cleopatra donned her headdress and did a little two-step. 

And as they headed toward the stage, they took deep breaths, all smiles. It was showtime.

Knights, cowgirls, winged forest spirits and at least four kinds of princesses are all part of The Answer, a sweeping and mellifluous musical about love from Daedream Theater Arts Company. Written and directed by Founder Kim Francis with help from company members, it leaves the audience with a message of community care and compassion, giving dozens of students a chance in the spotlight before the night is over.

It marks Daedream’s 37th season in New Haven, where it runs out of Mauro Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School on a weekly basis. 

For many members of the cast and crew—particularly mentors, most of whom are in high school and college—it could not come at a more critical time, reminding the audience of the power of the arts when they are under both local and national scrutiny. The play runs Friday and Saturday at James Hillhouse High School at 6 p.m. Tickets and more information are available here.   

Jevaughn Henry.

“You know, with everything that’s going on in the world, it’s just a good message for everyone,” said Jevaughn Henry, a Daedream “lifer” and employee at Amazon who is now one of the co-directors of the program. He later added that he has stayed with the program for that very reason: he wants to give kids the same opportunity he did. “It’s all about love.”

In one sense, that begins onstage, as The Answer brings together film soundtracks, expressive dance, fantastical storytelling, storybook characters and several thousand sewn-on sequins to share a message of love, one spirited number at a time. In the play’s universe, the once-handsome Cassian (Nathaniel Brown) has become hardened to the world, jilted by a lover who seems to have totally disappeared.

Or in the play’s words, he’s “a man so hardened by loss that he became ugly to look at.” His misery is contagious: love has been banned around him, although woodland creatures, furry friends and gentle sprites (and the cast of Toy Story, including and most endearingly Forky) all practice it anyway under the cover of secrecy.

They are part of a quiet, sweet sort of resistance, witnesses to different kinds of love that make the world still feel possible (yes reader, we could learn a thing or ten from them). These include, during the show, friendship love, romantic love, love for the planet, and self-love—all articulated in song, because this is musical theater after all.

So when a journalist (Alexander Oquendo) tries to get the scoop on the curse—and then offers to help break it—Cassian is interested. The musical that follows, broken into songs, skits, nods to film and freshly written dramatic vignettes, is that journey. And from the moment it begins with a choreographed, sparkly cover of “Somebody To Love,” there’s a sense that it will propel itself all the way to the finish.

At Daedream, an after-school program that Francis launched during her time at Mauro Sheridan, the love of community also goes much deeper than the stage. During the school year, the program meets twice a week at Mauro Sheridan, a K-8 magnet school nestled on Fountain Street in the city’s Westville neighborhood.

Many of the mentors, high school and college students and young professionals who have an arts background, are former Daedreamers themselves. A quick look at the roster reveals siblings, friends and cousins that have all stayed in the program together, forming a bond through the performing arts. 

At a dress rehearsal Tuesday afternoon, that was evident as students bustled around backstage, eager to start the show as crew members dimmed the lights and ushered actors behind the curtain. Mentors pulled their young charges into groups, doing headcounts while helping with costume pieces and fielding questions. At the center of the action, program mentor Mariah Moore looked around, taking stock at all that had to happen before opening. Despite the exhaustion of tech week, a flicker of a smile crossed her face.

Mariah Moore: “I was like, ‘I belong here,’” she remembered of the first time she saw the program in action. Years later, she's a mentor herself.

“It’s like family,” she said, remembering how excited she was when she first found the group back in first grade. At the time, “I wanted to start dancing,” and so she snuck into one of Daedream’s after-school rehearsals at Mauro-Sheridan, hoping that no one would notice an extra kid. Francis, of course, saw her immediately. She didn’t kick her out, though—that wouln’t be in the spirit of the program.

When she asked Moore what she was doing, “I was like, ‘I belong here,’” Moore remembered. The rest was history. By the time she was in the eighth grade, she was a mentor in training, and couldn’t imagine her life in New Haven without it. That’s still true years later, as she finishes her junior year at Hill Regional Career High School.

“Ever since I joined Daedream, I want to work with kids,” Moore said, adding that she’s especially interested in pediatrics. “They have so many personalities. I show my true self with the children and I truly love it.”

Down the hall, a gaggle of pint-sized girlfriends calmed their nerves, trading words of encouragement before the run-through. Gloria Locoh, a kindergartner at ACES Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School, said that she’d been nervous for the show—until her friends Kali and C., both fourth graders at Mauro-Sheridan, gave her a pep talk.

“I calm my nervous when I do something fun,” Gloria said. Now, she was thinking about how the play had instilled in her a greater love for the earth and its inhabitants, especially its youngest ones. Beside her, Kali marveled at the costumes, into which “people really put their love and sweat” before the show.

“I like to dress up!” Gloria added, her eyes gleaming. Around her, there were outfits everywhere a person looked: bursts of candy-colored cotton and bright polyester, pockets of satin and tuille, headpieces with beaks and tiny, stitched chainlink armor.  “One hundred of my family members are gonna be here!”

Onstage, that sense of tight-knit community remained abundantly clear. As lights came up, an all-student crew cued up the music to Queen’s “Somebody To Love,” the overture tinkling over Hillhouse’s vast, dark auditorium. Behind a curtain, over 50 kids looked forward, eyes wide, ready for their moment in the spotlight.

At the lip of the stage, Jeniya Henry looked out into the house, sporting a hydrant-red jacket with funky fringe, and began to belt the melody. As she did, the second curtain opened, and tiny dancers came to life all at once behind her. The pink sequins on their hats, all emblazoned with the word LOVE, glittered. Can anyyyyy-body find me! Somebody to-ooo-o love? they sang, arms soaring through the air as they spun, crouched, and swayed their way through the choreography. 

Henry, who is a junior at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, is another Daedream “lifer”—she’s been with the program since kindergarten (she is also Jevaughn’s sister, and has long followed him in her own creative pursuits). When she started the program, she just knew that she loved to sing and dance; now, she’s studying theater seriously at Co-Op. What keeps her coming back is a sense of responsibility to the young people in whom she sees an earlier version of herself.

“I have such a great bond with all the kids,” she said. “There really is love everywhere in the world, even if you don’t believe it. It feels amazing to be up there with them, sharing my talent.”

Around her, the show felt like a celebration, performers leaning on each other and on the music as they told a full, vibrant story of love. Before a rolling set piece, two students-turned-knights bemoaned the lack of love in the kingdom, settling up a sort of exposition for the audience and the students following along. Moments later, Brown-as-Cassian was center stage, serving up a platter of woe as Oquendo promised him only “honest, truthful journalism.”

Another few minutes, and an actor in a furry penguin costume had emerged from the wings, conjuring a sort of wooded alcove around him as he spoke. “I’m hanging out with friends and we’re doing a little dance party about friendship, since love is banned,” he chirped, just as casually as he might ask for dino nuggets at dinner time.

Some of the sweetest moments, meanwhile, come right out of Daedream’s educational DNA, which brims with teachable opportunities and gives both students and mentors a chance in the spotlight. As a fleet of characters from Toy Story flooded the stage, Francis—front row, headset on, script never far from her hand—looked up, searching for something.

“My tap dancers are missing!” she exclaimed. There was a beat; a rustling of bodies backstage. Within seconds, the belated click-clack of tap shoes rippled over the stage, and “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” could at last begin.  A few numbers later, Adrianyz Lopez Martinez stunned with “My Heart Will Go On,” playing the iconic Rose DeWitt from the 1997 movie Titanic.

But it was a slow-burning cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” sung by Jennifer Valdez, that nearly stopped the show in its tracks, walking the line between Daedream’s love for music and something much deeper and more soulful that students are able to nurture in the program.

As Valdez appeared in a tall, brambly headdress—think Medusa meets Maleficent with a touch of Midsommer—Moore and Oquendo took the stage beside her, performing a lyrical dance that had Moore, at one point, soaring through the air in a huge black-and-white beehive wig.

Back in the hallway, Kallie was feeling that love all over again. As she prepared to dance through a cover of TLC’s “What About Your Friends,” she said that the show had taught her to understand love, particularly the love she has for her friends and peers, in an entirely new way. That’s true of the program, which she hopes to continue next year.

“The play teaches us to love one another,” she said with a smile. “I used to think love was just, like, family love, but now I see it in a whole different way.”