Dreamscape depicts the death and inner lifeof a young woman, “Myeisha Mills,” who dreams though the impact of the twelve bullets that kill her. A meditation and reimagining of the night of December 28,1998, when nineteen-year-old Tyisha Miller was shot and killed by four Riverside Police Department officers while she lay unconscious in a car; the play takes apowerfully clear-eyed look at the relationships between race, the body, and violence.
Through Beatboxin’, spoken word and dance, the performance 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 the arm, shoulder, scalp, teeth, thigh, neck, back, breast, eye, mouth, skull—Myeisha reminisces about her life,using each body part as a jumping off point.She describes the pleasures of softball,dancing, kissing, and hair styling with sweetness, humor, and all the insight of a nineteen-year-old.
