Stage Notes: Silver Bullet Trailer

Silver Bullet Trailer is a new play with dance, live music, animation and video by Julie Shavers, directed by Dan O'Brien, with a cast of 12, and two main protagonists: an expectant mother and her unborn son. The mother-to-be (pregnant for two years!) lives in an Airstream motor home (referred to in the title), and the reluctant-to-come-out child (played by an adult in diapers) runs away to a dreamland in the old Wild West. "The idea of the play is that one can wake up in a dream world that's as real as this one," says Shavers.

The playwright got a lot of background for her script via three means: (1) She and her husband celebrated their marriage by taking a three-month road trip through the American Southwest; (2) when she was pregnant with her first child (not for 22 months!) she says she had "the craziest, wild dreams”; and (3) her sister is a single mother, who lives in a trailer in Tennessee, where Shavers is originally from. "A dreamscape is a good way to describe the play's action," she says, "you know how dreams are: one moment you're naked in the supermarket and in the next you're running down the highway." The play moves back and forth, from difficulties of the mother's world to the enchantments of the child's world, where he meets many icons: cowboys, Native Americans, clowns, magicians, "people who have lost their way and wind up living in dreams."

Ohio Theater, 66 Wooster St., (212) 868-4444. Mar. 28-Apr. 19. Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; also Sun., Mar. 30 & Mon., Mar. 31 at 8 p.m. $18.