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Student’s ‘Nightmare’ raises eyebrows

Art Center’s debut play shocks audience with ‘horror, fear, reverence’

By Andrew Wiebe

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Adam Burnett said he expected audiences to leave his play, “Nightmares: An Artful Demonstration of the Sublime” struggling to come to terms with themselves and what they’ve witnessed. The play will debut tonight at the Lawrence Arts Center

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'Nightmare' Takes The Stage

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“If nothing else, it would be nice for them to leave conflicted, for there to be a conflict,” Burnett, Topeka senior, director and playwright said. “They will leave with a lot to think about.”

“Nightmares…” centers around the work of painter Henry Fuseli through the mind and life of Joshua Chapman, an assistant professor of art who develops an uncommon obsession with the gothic, and often disturbing, work of the 18th century artist.

After acquiring one of Fuseli’s most notable works, “Nightmare,” and publishing a best-selling book on Fuseli’s life and work, Chapman’s life suddenly begins spiraling downward. In the process, Chapman’s supposed model life is violently destroyed along with the life of the woman who adores him, his wife Valerie.

Lara Thomas, Overland Park senior who plays Valerie, said “Nightmares…” is an examination of the manner in which art of all forms can affect the human mind. She said it was difficult to come to terms with many of the show’s controversial aspects at first. “Nightmares…” includes full frontal nudity and adult language, but the play’s complex nature and powerful content make the adult themes an afterthought for the actors and audience.

“It’s a very involved show, there is a lot going on, there is a lot of information presented and I think they will come away questioning what they expect from art,” Thomas said. “Just because we show things very realistically then we show things fantastically.”

Erik LaPointe, who plays the character of Chapman, said it was difficult at first to come to terms with the violent nature of his character and the actions he must portray on stage. He said although he thought he was ready to perform the part after auditioning, committing himself to the role was a difficult but rewarding process both personally and in terms of his professional aspirations.

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It’s a very involved show, there is a lot going on, there is a lot of information presented and I think they will come away questioning what they expect from art.

-Erik LaPointe, plays the character of Chapman

“I stuck to this security blanket for a lot of the first half of the process,” LaPointe said. “You know, just getting used to the subject matter and at some point you just have to let go of that and completely invest yourself in the actions on stage. It was kind of hard to do that because sometimes it frightened myself. I would walk away from rehearsals almost like a shell − scared of myself and scared of what I had done on stage.”

Burnett wrote “Nightmares…” during a four-day playwrighting retreat in Italy after conducting a year of research on Fuseli’s life and paintings. He said the notion of creating the sublime, the notion of the utmost emotion associated with art, motivated him to create a play merging Fuseli’s work with the dynamic of theater. Many of Fuseli’s paintings are projected on a theater wall throughout the play.

“It really becomes about the responsibility of the artist as well as those who view art, the limits of art taking over us and the danger of art,” Burnett said. “Not to say art is a bad thing, but seeing how far something can take a man or any person, taking them to their extreme limits.”

When the play is seen by audiences for the first time on Thursday, members will surely be pushed to their own limits. The most accurate way to describe what audience members will see may come directly from Chapman when he describes his own fascination with the disturbing, yet sublime, “Nightmare” hanging from his living room wall.

“The most supreme – the most supreme form of art is that which horrifies, terrifies and strikes you with fear, but also reverence.”

—Edited by Madeline Hyden

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