Dreamverse is a world-premiere full-length tragicomedy musical. Music and Lyrics by Xander Ambrose. Book by Xander Ambrose, Graham King, Blaire Battle.
Palo Alto, California. The near future. This is the last step to winning HermesLink’s nationwide VERSE Competition: the interview! Due to overpopulation, the government assigns careers to the unemployed by the age of twenty. In other words. . . these nineteen-year-olds are highly motivated to pass their interviews at HermesLink, a widely-known hot startup company on the rise. Determined to succeed and make a name for himself and make his parents proud, the aspirational community college dropout Samero, in his infinite imagination, discovers an entirely new way of connecting in the 21st century. A social media dreamworld. We might find meaning and truth in his elusive dreamscape. We might fall in love with someone we’ve never even met. We might crawl deeper in the whelms of our anxiety-ridden subconscious fueled by our toxic past romances. Can we learn to make the best of the time we were given? Or will our never-ending drive for connection steer us toward almost certain oblivion? How do we escape?
6 characters + ensemble. Contemporary pop/electronic score. Xander Ambrose is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television.