Small Lives/Big Dreams (1994-1997)

Conceived and Directed by Anne Bogart
Created and Performed by SITI Company

Small Lives /Big Dreams asks "why should we remember the past?" To me the theater is about memory, about remembering the big questions pertaining to being human. A great play lasts because it asks us to remember some important human issues. Is it true that if we are unable to remember our past, we have no future? If we lose our memory, will we lose our humanity?

In approaching a play about memory, I chose to sample freely from the plays of Anton Chekhov. The characters in Chekhov's plays are haunted by the past while attempting to look tentatively into their future. At the end of the nineteenth century, Chekhov was experiencing premonitions about the great social changes that lay ahead. Now at the end of the twentieth century, we sense the big changes ahead of us. In light of these changes, what is the role of our memories? What do we do with our past?

-Anne Bogart