Edinburgh Fringe Award Winner DREAMSCAPE to Have London Run at Arcola Theatre
The hip-hop production is written and directed by Rickerby Hinds.
Dreamscape, a fusion of beatboxing, spoken word and hip-hop dance that both challenges and provokes, will present a second London run since its Edinburgh Fringe Award-winning and critically acclaimed 2025 season.
The show has now transferred to the Arcola Theatre for 13 performances between 28th July – 8th August. An off-Broadway run in January – its New York premiere - presented by 59E59 and SoHo Playhouse fused a partnership for the first time in their histories.
Taking a powerful look at the relationships between race, the body, and violence, the play was inspired by the shocking true story of 19-year-old Black woman Tyisha Miller, who was shot dead by four California police officers while she lay unconscious in a car. Dreamscape reimagines her final living moments in the fictionalised form of Myeisha Mills.
Dreamscape is structured around an autopsy report recited by a dispassionate coroner. As each of the twelve bullet wounds is described in horrifying clinical detail - the damage done to her arm, shoulder, scalp, teeth, thigh, neck, back, breast, eye, mouth, skull - Myeisha's life bursts into vivid detail on stage - from the joy of dancing and softball to first kisses and hair styling, contrasting the violence of her death with lyrical remembrance of her life.
Receiving a record six NAACP Los Angeles nominations, Dreamscape won a total of four awards including Best Director, Best Lead Actor and Best Lead Actress. Translated into six languages, it has since been performed across the US, in Eastern Europe and in South Africa to great acclaim. The 2025 EdFringe production was the play's UK premiere.
The play is written and directed by Rickerby Hinds, who was one of the pioneers of hip-hop theatre in the USA with his play Daze to Come in 1989. It was the first full-length play to use the founding elements of hip-hop as the primary language of the stage.
Hinds' subsequent works have inspired generations of young playwrights to speak to the world in the language of hip-hop. In addition to his mission to open the stage up to a diversity of voices and experiences, his plays have the unique ability to challenge conventional notions of the stage while remaining respectful of its long history and traditions. Dreamscape is a significant addition to the canon of plays about contemporary Black experience.
Rickerby Hinds says: “If theatre is a tool for liberation, then we must find the places where the arts intersect with real life… Dreamscape was a reluctant creation born out of necessity. I was torn between trying to say something through my writing but worrying it could appear I was rushing to exploit another tragic event in the Black community. It took me to that same place of helplessness where Tyisha must have spent her last moments on earth.”
TRAILER:
Videos
