Abstract

Sleepwalk, Dance, Repeat is a one-act play with existentialist themes such as absurdity, death, and authenticity. Existentialism deals with subjective human experience in a meaningless, incomprehensible world. We are condemned to label everything around us, but the world is such that we can never be satisfied with our labels because they do not capture individuality. Everyone, to some degree, feels the need to understand what's going on, but we are always missing some piece of the puzzle. Thus, absurdity is the normal state of affairs for us. It is the result of our trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. The protagonist, Rose, is an existentialist hero in that she gradually accepts the inability to comprehend. My goal in writing this play was to breathe new life into existentialist ideas and introduce them to others in a way that sparks significant introspection.