Andy and Siddig wrote it :< And apparently there were plans at one point to let The Dream Box be an actual sequel in the written and purchase-able sense, at least according to an interview I read, but then it seemed that they just performed it at a convention and some kind of one-night event in LA. There’s a post going around here on Tumblr about it. Apparently Sid and Andy switched roles a whole bunch during the course of it, with Andy playing Bashir and Sid playing Garak, as well as both of them playing other characters - some from ASIT, even - but beyond that and the thing with “I love you” over and over and being able to really understand the subtleties in each other’s communication, there is not a whole lot of information. Which is devastatingly sad.
Apparently, and I just learned this the other day, Andy wrote a little follow up to The Dream Box and that ended up in an anthology that WAS published, though how much it’s going to tell us about The Dream Box itself, I don’t know. (I may have just bought that anthology for a penny. More news on this front as it develops/is delivered to my house.)
This is like some weird fandom archaeology, isn’t it? Most of me just writhes in agony that we don’t have anything of The Dream Box and the other part of me thinks this could be a really cool fandom game, like, fill in the blanks or something. I honestly can’t get the damn thing out of my head, so I think I’ll probably be drawing lots of stupid glowing cubes until it stops being such a Problem. And it would be fun to make some sort of super watercolored dreamy comic-ish thing about it.
I love the idea that it was happening all in their heads or something, though. Like they sat with this ‘box’ and were sort of joined for a bit, and got to experience each other’s weird past stuff, but it’s like a dream in which, upon relating it to someone the next day, you say, “Yeah, it was my aunt’s house, but not,” or “She was my mom, but not my mom, you know?” So that manifested in the play as “Yeah, this was Palandine, but also not Palandine (because she was being played by Sid or Andy, whoever was needed).” It makes sense that they would have leaked into each other’s memories like that when they were connected by something that really let them communicate.
I’m fascinated by it, I marinate in it, I love it, I wish I could see/read/hear it and I want to MAKE it I resonate with it so much. It’s possible that out there somewhere is some dusty issue of a fanzine or fanclub newsletter that has a bit written by someone who went to go see the show, so we may get lucky someday when someone cleans out their basement. Possibly Andy will change his mind about letting it remain a performance and give us ten pages of lifeless script and we can all dance with it. Best not to harass him about it though. He was very adamant at STLV that ASIT was all he had to say on the subject of Garak’s future. He sounded to me like he wanted to keep any conversation about it close to the root. Soooo maybe we just need to be a really loving fandom presence either way.
Plus, if the play had any kind of resemblance to what I described, I could sort of see why he wanted it to be a performance only. There’s a kind of theater magic thing that would really be part of the story. They weren’t in any kind of makeup, so Andy wasn’t covered in ridges or anything, but people who saw it still said he felt Cardassian when he was supposed to. So how effective would that have been in a place where he’s playing someone who is and is not at the same time? From an artistic standpoint, I can see why he’d want it to be purely theater.
But from a fan standpoint, I weep.
(And goodness, thank you! Especially on the bodies front! I try to keep them different since Bashir is so much lanky all over and Garak is kind of a pentagonal brick on stick legs. It would be a great disservice not to draw them differently.)