In class 21T.100 (Theater Arts Production), students are invited to join MIT Theater Arts faculty and staff in the development of a fully-staged production for an audience. Participants collaborate as performers, designers, writers, choreographers, and technicians.
“21T.100 sits at the pinnacle of our curriculum,” says Jay Scheib, section head for MIT Music and Theater Arts and the Class of 1949 Professor. “What’s explored in our studios is put to the test in production — lighting design, scenography, performance, projection — and shared with the community.”
Weekly rehearsals, design labs, and workshops introduce students to an array of performance techniques over the course of the term, culminating in a public performance. The course is open to students at all levels of experience.
Each term evolves a different project that might include community-driven interventions, classical or contemporary plays, devised works, screenplays, musicals, or other live performance events.
For fall 2025, Scheib and his student and staff collaborators in 21T.100 took on playwright Stan Lai’s “A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢,” a play described as “a meteor of the Chinese contemporary theater told through the eyes of over 100 characters onstage, offstage, backstage, and beyond, from Shanghai to Paris and back.”
“This is so perfect, because I’ve always wanted to know more about this show,” says Audrey Zhu, a first-year mechanical engineering major and actor in the play. “It was kind of a cool cultural exchange because it’s a Chinese play being performed in English.”
“As they say, experience is in the leap, and not the step,” Scheib continues. “The experience of working on “A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢” — from beginning to end — has been a deeply special leap.”
“‘A Dream Like A Dream’ depicts many specific people in a tumultuous world, quite similar to ours at the moment,” says Xinyu Xu ’25, an electrical engineering and computer science major who directed the play with Scheib. “People in the play react (ir)rationally, which lets us know that however we react is understandable.”
Preparing for a massive production
“A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢” is the first in a series of planned productions with the goal of increasing civic discourse, supported by MIT’s Center for Art, Science, & Technology. When Anna Borou Yu — an interdisciplinary researcher, trained dancer, director of MyStudio, and a doctoral student at the University of California at Santa Barbara who helped design the production — participated in Scheib’s Fundamentals of Directing class and staged a 20-minute excerpt from the play, he grew excited about the possibility of a full-length treatment.
“People respond to the play in professional and personal terms, like Jay did,” Borou Yu says.
While Lai’s play ran for eight hours during its Chinese theatrical run, the MIT Theater production ran closer to six-and-a-half. In addition to 30 actors playing 100 characters, in-act costume changes, and video production elements, it included an intermission and meal.
“For most in the cast, these stories reflect on revolution, colonialism, and the Chinese diaspora, and either resonate directly or are deeply relatable,” Scheib says. “With some 35 students involved, on stage and behind the scenes, this was a very special experience.”
MIT undergraduates worked alongside students from Harvard University, Wellesley College, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and visiting PhD student collaborators from Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the University of California at Santa Barbara, the production bristled with an energy and fearlessness rarely experienced in any theater.
“I like the concept of a story within a story,” Zhu says. “There were so many opportunities to describe life, and how people connect with other people.”
From the set design — which included a circular stage with space at the center for an audience on swivel chairs — to the large circular paper projection surface measuring 10 feet high by 40 feet wide suspended above the stage, the team sought to create and highlight an unbroken connection between the players and the audience, according to Joseph Lark-Riley, technical production specialist with MIT Theater.
“The audience is undeniably part of, and integral to, these stories,” he says. “Video is now an integral part of modern theater production. People experience the world on screens. It’s where the world is.”
Cameras choreographed into the action invited audiences to experience the story simultaneously as a live 360-degree film projected above the stage and as a dynamically staged, theatrical performance. Video served to mediate the experience for participants and actors alike.
“It was hard at the beginning, because the camera was so heavy,” says Yanyi Liu, a graduate student in MIT’s architecture program and a camera operator for the theatrical run. “Close-ups were uncomfortable. It felt like I was invading actors’ spaces.” However, Liu notes, as she grew comfortable with the work and allowed herself access to the performers and her part in the performance, she grew comfortable and could experience moments as a participant.
“It is critical for students — especially in the sciences, but also in the humanities — to learn something about how to struggle creatively with the blank page,” Scheib says. Leadership in any field asks for an expansive relationship with subjectivity. “And this is core to the theater,” he continues.
“The play breaks the fourth wall and invites everyone into the performance,” Zhu says. “Jay let us improvise quite a bit, which gave actors opportunities to stretch ourselves.”
The production offered opportunities to play with lighting design, which appealed to Xu.
“I think this play has made me a more imaginative and unrestricted lighting designer,” she says. “Through Jay’s direction, I learned to avoid being constrained by elements like time of day or location, and instead just try to portray characters’ or scenes’ inner energy through lighting.”
Jolie Han, a second-year computation and cognition major and theater arts minor who performed a major role in the play, described her experience as “quite beautiful.”
“It’s this really cool intersection between Chinese and Asian and American culture and art,” Han says.
Production triumphs and challenges
Scheib and his collaborators knew staging Lai’s work for American audiences would be a major undertaking. But the challenges offered valuable opportunities for experimentation and technological innovation, key elements of the MIT experience.
“We are developing a range of techniques around the use of machine vision, large language models, and other tools in the use of live and processed video feeds,” Scheib says.
“This play is big!” Lark-Riley exclaims, and it is. Several hours of running time, dozens of costume changes in the middle of the performance, and creating a memorable audience experience while managing the plethora of parts moving behind the scenes takes several steady sets of hands.
“I’ve been working on producing, writing, and directing plays since I was a first-year student,” says Katrina Chan ’25, a double major in architecture and comparative media studies/writing, who joined the production as a set designer and found herself enjoying the experience as an actor. “A play this fascinating and complex was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
Sound design provided additional opportunities for creative problem-solving. “Another interesting element was in the use of microphones,” Scheib says. “I was really hoping that the actors could speak at a level not unlike how they speak in their daily lives.”
“Seeing the set in person was mind-blowing,” Han says while also praising the use of cameras throughout the production. “This was a great way to experience acting on stage and in film.”
“Jay just handed me a camera and pointed me at the production, which was daunting and exciting,” Liu recalls. “As a member of the projection design team, I had opportunities to find solutions for challenges related to the different media in use during the play. I hadn’t done that before.”
“Staging a theater production offers a gorgeous means of challenging the limits of our perception,” Scheib contends.
“Applying technology in creative practice shapes new forms of media art and contemporary artistic expression,” according to Borou Yu’s research and experiences. “It can reshape cognitive processes and reveal the malleability of relationships between humans and existing and emerging media.”
Expanding the theater canon
Popular Western theater has, in the past, skewed white and male, with exemptions for an occasional Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, or Stan Lai. With “A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢,” Scheib seeks to widen the door through which the arts invite others into the canon.
What makes “A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢” so valuable is that it tells a story of someone who is dying, and who is encouraged to tell his story so he might find comfort in making sense of his life as he prepares for the next journey.
“We use the theater to reflect on our lives. Whether with a play by Shakespeare, Fornés, Euripides, or Stan Lai, it should play like it was written this morning,” Scheib asserts. “‘A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢’ is quite possibly one of the most important works of the Chinese/Taiwanese contemporary theater — maybe in part because of its length and demanding requirements — but primarily because it sets out to tell a somewhat simple story of life — with all of its implicit complexities.”
“My inclination is to hone in on the core of it, which is humans’ connections to one another,” Lark-Riley says about his experience working on the production.
“I saw myself in the work,” says Borou Yu, “My background in media art, dance, and architecture trained me to think of ‘A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢’ in terms of movement, space, and the relationships between them.”
“I’ve always been in love with storytelling and pushing boundaries in the art form,” Chan says. “Here was an opportunity to tell a unique story from a fascinating author in new and interesting ways.”
Lai’s work invites opportunities to broaden our understanding of human experiences, to look beyond a singular view of life and consider how others grapple with big questions and ideas, according to senior Mustafa Al-Obaidi, a double major in mechanical engineering and theater arts.
“I want to help people think about us (humans) collectively,” Al-Obaidi says of his duty as an actor.
“There’s an infinite set of personality traits I can have within me and I could enlarge a portion of myself for the role,” Zhu says.
“We have found a thrilling proof of concept”
Following the success of “A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢,” and with support from the Institute and its students, Scheib and his collaborators are excited to pursue other world-building opportunities through future theater productions.
“We have found a thrilling proof of concept,” Scheib says. “It is a lovely pedagogical opportunity. Students co-creating solutions to challenging dilemmas take enormous leaps, which can benefit them in the theater and in life.”
“Introducing mediated experiences into theater allows us to reckon with the technology and one another,” Lark-Riley says.
At a STEM institution like MIT, the humanities and sciences coexist, change shape, and yield interesting discoveries while helping students manage successes and failures. “My STEM classes taught me to not be afraid of trying and failing,” Xu says. “In making art and in my computer science studies, I learned the value of switching my mindset swiftly when necessary.”
“The chance to be involved in something of this caliber is an experience I’m grateful to have,” Han says.
“Every time we stepped on stage it was the first and last time we would have that experience,” Chan says. It’s an experience she and other students want to carry with them into their other classrooms and their lives after graduation.
The team believes the play’s complexity, and the solutions they partnered to find, have real-world import. With “A Dream Like a Dream 如夢之夢,” the class and production offered an opportunity to show unity, create a space of belonging — and maybe signal that all of us, our lives are all somehow connected.
“We all live here,” Scheib adds. “Respect, care, and consideration matter. These are important values.”
