I am deeply grateful to the many individuals and organizations that provided me with support, assistance, and inspiration to write Dreamwork for Dramatic Writing. Without their guidance and encouragement, it would never have come to pass. To start, I’d like to acknowledge Professor Marvin Carlson, who was my department chair at the City University of New York Graduate Center and served on my dissertation committee. It was at his suggestion that I read the late works of Bert O. States, knowing that I had a profound connection with dreaming and my own dramatic writing. I’m also grateful for my conversations with Bert States, who provided me with great insights into his own research in the phenomenology of dreaming, which were central to my creation of this technique. I’d also like to thank my emeritus colleague at the University of Missouri, Dr. Suzanne Burgoyne, for her ongoing encouragement in my teaching of dreamwork workshops, and her publication of a chapter on this work in her own Creativity in Theatre Theory and Action in Theatre/Drama Education. I’m also deeply grateful to my colleagues at Aristotle University, Professors Tatiani Rapatzikou, Zoe Detsi, Tatiana Liani, and my Fulbright host, Giorgos Antoniou, along with the Fulbright Greece organization, and in particular, Nicholas Tourides and Artemis Zenetrou, for their willingness to allow me to teach dreamwork for dramatic writing to their students on both of my Fulbright Scholar residencies there in 2018 and 2023. I was very grateful to my colleagues at the University of Seville, including my Fulbright host Ramón Espejo Romero, Josefa Fernández Martín, and Vicente Chacón Carmona for allowing me to teach this work there as well. I’m very grateful to the staff of Fulbright Spain, including Executive Director, Alberto López San Miguel, Clara Badimón, and Sara Abad for their support of my playwriting efforts throughout my Fulbright residency.
I am deeply grateful to my theatre department chairs Dr. M. Heather Carver and Dr. Miriam Hedges for providing me the Fulbright sabbaticals I needed to complete this work, and to the University of Missouri Research Council, which provided the funding I needed to do my research and teaching in Europe exploring the techniques of dreamwork for dramatic writing with the students there. I would also like to thank the many, many students who studied this technique with me at the mu Department of Theatre and were willing to put up with my somewhat “New Age” approach to teaching playwriting. It was their success that encouraged me to continue this work, and I have been especially impressed by many awards they won through the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, to which I also owe a debt of gratitude, as
Finally, I am deeply grateful to my wife, Meg Phillips Crespy, who not only designed the beautiful cover for this book, but also has experimented with this technique on her own screenplays, and has become nearly as expert in how it works as I am. She provided me with constant love and encouragement to teach, research, and publish this somewhat unusual work and the courage to bring it to my student and colleagues.