Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alumnus Marvin Quijada ’05, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting, is the creator and star of Teatro Vista‘s world premiere The Dream King, a “silent musical” running May 11 through June 18 at the Chopin Theatre, located at 1543 W. Division in Chicago’s Bucktown/Wicker Park neighborhood. Student discounts are available. For tickets, click here.

The Dream King is the story of a man who falls in love with the woman of his dreams while in his dreams – an epic and delightful journey of a psyche in revolt told through movement, clowning, physical comedy, silent film style projections (in English, Spanish, and Polish), a dynamic musical score, and a healthy dose of wild imagination.

In a recent interview in the Chicago Reader, Quijada noted that The Dream King was originally scheduled to be part of Teatro Vista’s 2019-2020 season – until the state of Illinois declared a complete shutdown of all public activities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I continued working on the piece because I had nothing else to do,” Quijada says in the Reader interview. “It just made the piece that more personal, which makes this whole process that more terrifying, even though it is a comedy, and there is a lot of clowning in it. To me, some of the best clowning and some of the best art comes from when it is really personal. . . . I was calling it a silent play, then. But then it dawned on me that this was a musical since there’s music the whole time, just like a silent movie, so why not call it a silent musical? It’s like a silent movie on stage, an homage to silent movies.” To read the full Chicago Reader interview, click here.

Besides Quijada, the show’s cast includes Columbia College Theatre Department faculty member Tommy Rivera-Vega. Columbia College alum Conchita Avitia ’18, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Theatre Design, is the production’s lighting designer.