In the Time of the Dream Warrior - Just What Are Golgonoozans Anyway?

Well. Well. Well.

Golgonoozans is a theatre company created by playwright William Ilan Rubel who studied English at Columbia University and is a current Ph.D. student at UBC. In The Time of The Dream Warrior is a premiere of a new play happening at the Vancouver Fringe.

Our intrepid hero, an undergrad named Flip Johnson, has vivid dreams of vanishing cultures. He's having some trouble passing one class with a particularly demanding old-school professor named Franz Kraukenhauer. Flip's strategy involves trying to help the not-so-young professor to meet pretty young women including a food psychic (what?) and a geeky classmate.  

Apparently, the play is based on almost-real events (which makes sense considering the main character is a young man who seems to be going to university in New York City). It features giant masks by David Secunda (which are quite funky) and original songs by NYC band Sister Monk (again, pretty good).  Judge for yourself - you can click here to see some photos and hear music samples.

Though I truly liked the music and mask designs, I think that the script is fairly muddled. I didn't feel terribly invested in Flip's quest to pass his class so he could go on to study corporate law. And most of the other characters in “reality” were less interesting than the masked characters which I understood to be Golgonoozans who are helping humans to evolve (into what I can't really tell you). Overall, I acknowledge that it's a premiere – but it definitely needs more work.