Family, grief, religion, and love take center stage in a new play written by Steph Chen ’25 and directed by Wasif Sami ’25 that debuted on Feb. 14 in the Wallace Theater. From script to stage, “To Dream About Wings” is the culmination of a two-year effort that between the playwright and the director.
Chen started writing “To Dream About Wings” during her junior fall semester in THR 205: Introductory Playwriting - taught by Nathan Davis, a former Lecturer in Theater at Princeton and Berlind Playwright-in-Residence - which she took with limited theater experience.
Chen says that the initial concept for the play centered on Leonardo da Vinci and his ornithopter, a flying machine.
“I had this vision of a boy who was trying to fly, and … that evolved into this story about Asian Americanness, ambition, the American dream. Families, grief, love, loss, religion — all those things that are contained in this play are sort of underlined with this element of magical realism,” she said.
“To Dream About Wings” follows two teenagers: Leo, an optimistic dreamer, and Anna, a realist searching for religion and the meaning of love.
The play is “the arc of [Anna’s] grief and acceptance as she mourns the loss of a very dear friend of hers, someone that she loves very much, as well as the anticipatory grief of losing her father and generally navigating the difficulties of the relationships in her life,” said Seryn Kim ’27, who plays Anna.
Two airplanes on the set of “To Dream About Wings.”
Annika Plunkett / The Daily Princetonian
Performed in a small theater with a small cast, the show feels exceptionally intimate and relatable. It has a simple beauty, with its magical plot and intentional stage design. From your seat, you feel the actors’ and crew members’ camaraderie as tragedy, love, and community unfold.
In short, the play is cathartic: You will cry but be glad to do so.
The play was chosen by the theater department to be part of the performance season and Chen was paired with Sami to direct the play. They’ve been working together since the summer and have become a close team.
“It’s basically like having a sibling on an artistic project. We’re able to be thought partners, we’re able to disagree, we’re able to lift each other up, buy each other coffee, stay hours after to talk about it,” Sami told The Daily Princetonian.
“To Dream About Wings” is Sami’s ninth and final play that he has directed on campus, an occasion that he describes as bittersweet.
“I love directing because it’s basically a series of collaborations with people. You’re collaborating with a player, you’re collaborating with each designer, you’re working with each actor, and you’re … like a coach weaving these people together and trying to tell a story,” Sami said.
Indeed, these collaborations played a key role in bringing the story together. Chen and Sami underscored that playmaking could not happen without a group effort. Numerous conversations with each other, the faculty, production staff, designers, and cast went into the process of playwriting and production.
“Theater making is a team effort,” Sami said. “It requires the time, creativity, and effort of so many people. It’s like an ecology. And it’s not just students, it’s also the production staff of the Lewis Center.”
This collaborative approach is apparent throughout the show. Actors and crew work together to imply the magical act of flying and convey the emotion of powerful scenes to the audience from a funeral, to parents worrying for their child, to the terror and heartbreak that Anna feels over losing someone she loves.
The cast and crew, most of whom were selected during the Theater Department’s “Try on Theater Days” at the beginning of the academic year, have been working on “To Dream About Wings” since the fall semester.
“We were looking for actors who are willing to play with empathy and love and joy,” Chen said.
They succeeded. The actors told the ‘Prince’ they make it a priority to get to know their characters and draw out the nuances of their emotional arcs.
Vincent D’Angelo ’28, who plays the priest, described his role to the ‘Prince’: “The priest is the glue that holds the play together. In my mind, he’s the guy who brings the two main characters to their eventual revelations towards the end of the conclusion of the play.”
It’s easy for the actors to embody their characters’ emotions. Kim described one powerful scene between her character and the priest as a scene “that always makes me cry, I never have to work up tears, they just come out,” she said.
The play can be a tear-jerker. One member of the crew even admitted to crying over a scene during dress rehearsal. It also contains moments of childlike wonder, humor, and fun, including a scene in which Leo, the boy who dreams of flying, is suddenly surrounded by flying objects while his grandmother naps.
The “To Dream About Wings” set with dimmed lights.
Annika Plunkett / The Daily Princetonian
It’s not just the acting that makes the show magical. The props, lighting, set design, and actors’ performances are intentionally designed to play with the audience’s wonder and draw them into the story and its magical realism over time.
“You’re telling that story in three dimensions, with the actors’ performances, with the lights, with the space,” Sami told the ‘Prince.’
“We really want to be thinking about: How are these elements of design making the audience feel the story you want to tell for them?” Sophia Vernon ’27, the stage manager, added.
For Chen, it is a magical experience to see her work come to life through the actors and design on stage. She says, once the show begins, “It becomes more than just me. So it’s a surreal experience to know that I wrote these words, but also to know that now they don’t belong to me, and they belong to everyone who’s a part of the process, and also the audience.”
“To Dream About Wings” runs Feb. 14, 15, 20, 21, and 22 at 8 p.m. in the Wallace Theater.
Annika Plunkett is a contributing writer for The Prospect and a member of the Newsletter team. She can be reached at ap3616@princeton.edu.
Please direct any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com
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