by Ren Willis, PhD candidate in English Literature, Logan Center Editorial Intern

Photo credit: joe mazza/brave lux (IG: @brave.lux/website: https://bravelux.com) *Courtesy of the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies*

Emmy award-winning performance collective and media arts company Manual Cinema returned to Hyde Park this spring quarter for several sold-out performances of their latest production from director Sarah Fornace, Dream Delivery Service, a Manual Cinema co-production with The University of Chicago. Bringing Manual Cinema into residence at UChicago has long been an aspiration for the university’s Committee on Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), in line with their ongoing commitment to supporting experimental artistry. Known for their innovative fusion of shadow puppetry, live music, projection, and cinematic storytelling, Manual Cinema was founded by alumni of the university and first appeared at the Logan Center during its grand opening in 2012. Over the course of their residency, the company has worked in close collaboration with TAPS, opening up their creative process to daily observation and participation from students. This latest production takes us on a journey inside the human mind itself, exploring the hopes, anxieties, and disillusionments of the digital age through a series of dreamlike sequences. In a moment where debates surrounding artificial intelligence and its use in the arts increasingly dominate public discourse, the production felt especially timely.

Dream Delivery Service unfolds through three vignettes—“A Dream of My Childhood Home,” “A Dream of Romance,” and “A Dream of Demons.” Actors Sarah Thau, Asteria Mao, and Julia Morales deliver compelling performances in each respective vignette, where they portray different projections of the sleeping subject whose unconscious we are invited to visit: the Dreamer. While the actual Dreamer slumbers offstage, a team of “Dream Deliverers”—personified neurons dressed in office attire—work diligently behind the scenes, navigating increasingly surreal dreamscapes to keep the Dreamer’s mind running smoothly.

That is, until a new figure spawns in the mind of the Dreamer named Claude, who consumes the Dream Deliverers and vomits them up as a series of reaction memes and viral videos. From here, the Dreamer ceases dreaming and falls into a hypnotic doomscrolling trance, bombarded with a nonstop stream of images, videos, pop culture, and digital stimulation. But—without spoiling too much—Dream Delivery Services ultimately resists what could’ve been a nihilistic take on the inevitability of our capture by algorithms designed to keep us hooked on instant dopamine. Instead, the show closes with a restorative vision of reconnection and renewal, suggesting that even in the midst of our time’s technological encroachment, dreaming is still—must still be—possible.

Sitting in the audience after the final curtain, as spectators were invited onto the stage to examine Xerox machines and other analog technologies that were incorporated into the production, I found in the show’s ending an invitation to pursue what historian and cultural critic Robin D. G. Kelley calls “freedom dreaming.” Freedom dreaming is an idea rooted in the Black Radical Tradition and influenced by Surrealist philosophy; it proposes that “the map to a new world is in the imagination, in what we see in our third eyes rather than in the desolation that surrounds us.” In a time where companies often present AI as an inevitable development, and one that young people ought to embrace if they want to be competitive on the job market, the arts remain a contested terrain between investors in AI and the artists and audiences who reject it.

Contrary to early predictions that young people would embrace AI and become valuable assets to companies due to their digital nativity, newer data demonstrates that Gen Z prefers human-made art and live experiences more than other demographics. Roughly two-thirds of Gen Z respondents in a Pew Research study reported that they would enjoy a work of art less if they learned it had been created using AI, the highest of any age demographic. And despite executives like Netflix’s Ted Sarandos forecasting the demise of “outdated” movie theaters in favor of at-home streaming, reports from this April demonstrate that Gen Z now represents the largest share of moviegoers, with 87% of Gen Z reporting that they went to see a movie in theaters last year, also the highest of any age demographic. Gen Z has helped fuel the ongoing boom in live music attendance, and Gen Z art collectors reportedly spend over one-quarter of their income purchasing art, significantly more than older cohorts. Rather than embracing AI, digitization, and streaming, many young people appear to be investing deeply in forms of art rooted in human expression, labor, and communal experience.

Seen through this lens, Dream Delivery Service offers more than a cautionary tale about cutting down your screen time. It takes up the idea of artistry as an act of freedom dreaming, a refusal to accept that AI and streaming will inevitably replace imagination and community. The cast and crew behind Manual Cinema, alongside the many student-artists creating and exhibiting their work throughout the Logan Center and across the university, embody this commitment to experiencing art as something fundamentally human.

Manual Cinema Brings ‘Dream Delivery Service’ to The Logan Center

Events, exhibitions, and programs at the Logan Center are open to all. We look forward to welcoming you to experience, create, and contemplate art with us!

Manual Cinema Brings ‘Dream Delivery Service’ to The Logan Center

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Events, exhibitions, and programs at the Logan Center are open to all. We look forward to welcoming you to experience, create, and contemplate art with us!