Dreaming Lens: Were you prepared for your role or not? How were you attired? At what level of success did you perform? Did you know the audience or were they strangers? What was their response? Was it familiar territory or a strange or odd setting? Is this a recurring dream or a single occurrence?
Personal Focus: Art imitates life and the theater has always been a metaphor for the unfolding drama of our everyday experience. In fact, dramatic structure replicates the process of conscious awareness on stage just as it happens on the personal level. First, there is an inciting incident that causes a crisis, which plays out in the story that is being told. After a climactic confrontation, the crisis resolves itself through an organic change in the psyche of the hero of the story. The catharsis that results alters both reality and the perception of reality for all involved.
Life can often feel like a performance. In this way, dreaming of this image indicates that your unconscious is expressing a sense of your current life as being under public scrutiny. This is a common recurring dream, signifying the dreamer’s sense of feeling exposed or fear of performing up to standards. The subtlety here is in whether you are on stage because of heightened vulnerability or because you are hiding your true feelings by “acting” your way through an experience.
By considering the timing of the dream with regard to current situations in your life, you can discover your true sense of preparedness for what is being thrown at you at the time of this dream. By examining this thoroughly, you can assess whether this dream means you are feeling incompetent to face a challenge in life, or if you are feeling prepared to perform at peak capabilities. A highly stylized performance could indicate inauthenticity in some area. Conversely, it could connect to a powerful sense of creative originality. Forgetting your lines may represent your discomfort in some role or false persona you are putting on for the approval of others.
Life is often like a performance. How you feel about this dream reveals how you feel about how well you are performing at this moment in time. [1]