Dreams From A Planet in Peril - a film by Lee Roscoe and Janet Murphy Robertson

Dream From A Planet in Peril, an experimental art film by Lee Roscoe and Janet Murphy Robertson
Friday, March 31, 2023 • 2:00pm

FREE with paid Museum admission. RSVP is appreciated.

The Cape Cod Museum of Art will host the Regional Premiere of Dreams from a Planet in Peril, a new experimental art film by writer/director Lee Roscoe and filmmaker/producer Janet Murphy Robertson. The action unfolds as a series of intense dreams in which the female protagonist—a passionate environmentalist—witnesses the progressive destruction of the Earth and its underlying causes and consequences. She ultimately awakens and confronts the perpetrators within the fourth dream itself. This last portion of the movie—also distributed as a short film titled The Warning—had its New York premiere at the prestigious Chelsea Film Festival in October 2022 and was a finalist for three additional awards at the Independent Film Shorts Awards in LA. After the 65-minute screening, there will be a talk-back session with the creators and some of the starring actors.

Just as in an ordinary night of dreams, the film’s “plot,” visuals, and language change completely as the action unfolds and literal realism is rare. Earth’s peril comes to life at different points as hyperbole, humor, satire, or melodrama and with all the variety, confusion, emotional range, and fragmentation of the dreamworld itself. In the first dream—Water Spirits Colloquy—two Greek demigods and a legendary Native American spirit meet to share their torment over the ravaging of Earth’s waters by humans and eventually conspire to exact revenge. They interact amidst spectacular underwater and terrestrial imagery and in scenes of environmental destruction that build to a dramatic ending. In The Cage, an owl watches as three characters argue, with a mixture of stunning insight and staggering myopia, in a fast-paced mini class war that highlights societal conflicts impeding change. In Reprieve, an indigenous man in despair over the demise of his culture and the Earth is saved by the common decency of people he barely knows. The Warning brings the film to its stunning conclusion as the nameless slumbering woman is propelled by her dreams into a cartoon world so outrageously destructive to the planet that she steps into the dream and attempts to stop the madness.

In addition to Roscoe, the cast includes nine other beloved Massachusetts-based actors: Tom Wolfson, Judith Partelow (courtesy of SAG), Rod Owens, Karen McPherson, Constance Wilkinson, Cleo Zani, Geof Newton, Olivia Thompson, and LeVane Harrington.

DREAMS FROM A PLANET IN PERIL is supported in part by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (Towns of Brewster and Dennis).

Lee Roscoe is an award-winning playwright, environmentalist and journalist and currently a correspondent for Artscope Magazine and Provincetown Magazine and the author of the newly published book Wampanoag Art for the Ages, Traditional and Transitional. You may have heard her radio play, The Mooncusser’s Tale on WOMRFM or seen the online viewings of IMPOSSIBLE? These and Dreams… have been supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Others of her plays have been seen at The Living Theatre, NYC, and from Provincetown to Boston, San Francisco and the midwest. Early in her career she worked as an Equity actress Off-Broadway and in indie films, and invented the Instant Dress (pioneering multi-use modular clothing.)

She is also a former Cape Cod and Massachusetts environmental activist and environmental educator,  as a Woods Hole Ocean Science Journalism Fellow, a recipient of numerous WHSTEPS (Woods Hole Science, Technology and Education Partnership grants), an Eisenhower grant for creating nature/curriculum, a Massachusetts legislature commendation and  other awards and grants. As a journalist (in addition to many other subjects) Roscoe has covered many environmental stories regionally and nationally (some cited in scientific journals) for publications such as Massachusetts Wildlife Magazine, New York Conservationist, Oceanus online, Sierra, and Natural History Magazine.

Janet Murphy Robertson is a former New York executive and management consultant and the founder and executive director of ArtistsAndMusicians.org, a firm that has put the spotlight on creative and socially conscious people and produced plays, films, and musical events since 2008. In 2021, she founded Shoestring Virtual Theater, which produces films using a mix of techniques and technologies native to theater, film, and TV. This includes both traditional and green-screen filming/recording, cartooning, sound effects, special effects, musical scores, virtual video and photographic backgrounds, and black-and-white, as well as color, styling. Her earlier films about social issues include Journeys in the Light, Untold Stories of Cape Cod, produced with Zion Union Heritage Museum (Hyannis) and Icons of the Civil Rights Movement, based on Pamela Chatterton-Purdy and Rev. Dr. David A. Purdy’s landmark exhibition by this name.

For more information and to RSVP, visit https://www.ccmoa.org/events/2023-march-premiere-dreams-from-a-planet-in-peril