By: Rod Hagwood
an excerpt:
"The Carunchos are mindful of the marketing push the movie version has given them. "It's a happy accident," Natalie says. "We think it's great that 'Into the Woods' is in the air."
And the name DreamCatcher? Their Aunt Christie suggested it in 2007, when J.J. and Natalie were struggling to come up with a name for their theater company.
"I looked over and said, 'I think you just got it," J.J. recalls. "I used to have a lot of nightmares when I was a kid. My mother bought me [a dream catcher] and said, 'This will help.' I still have one above my bed in New York City. The idea is that the bad dreams get stuck in the web and the good dreams come down to you through the feathers. In the light of day, the light hits them stuck in the web, and the bad dreams are destroyed. It wasn't about hiding the bad dream. It's putting them in front of your face. But with the wind blowing on them and the light, maybe they are less scary than you think."
Natalie adds, "We gather actors and audiences together, and we turn the lights down, and we tell them this dream. And in that experience, they are able to confront everything. They take the good dreams with them and remember the bad dreams. But once the lights are turned back on, they are maybe a little more brave. It's a beautiful image that we are trying very hard to honor."