When 22 year-old writer Carly Bryann Young and her sister, 20 year-old performer Audrey Bryann Young, arrived in Newport, their first destination was the Newport Performing Arts Centre. “It is such a beautiful theatre,” says Carly. “We got to see some demonstrations and shows, and were really amazed by the level of talent in singing, dancing, and performance art. It was reassuring to know that we had settled in a place where people were creative.”

Indeed, the Young sisters had always found opportunities to work with creative professionals. They lived on the Hilo side of the Big Island of Hawaii for 8 years, where Carly took advanced literature & filmmaking courses at the University of Hawaii at Hilo at the age of 12, while Audrey performed in the University’s dance program at age 10 and danced with principal dancers from the American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet at the Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu. At the same time, Carly was writing novels, screenplays, and stageplays (one placed in the Top 20 of the 2007 Young National Playwrights Competition in New York). “I was encouraged by a lot of great mentors,” Carly recalls, “novelists, the University professors, and a professional screenwriter who taught me the mechanics of screenwriting. And this was while we were living in a rainforest, on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

After a series of behind-the-scenes meetings with Hollywood professionals in 2008, the Young sisters were convinced to relocate to Burbank, CA to further their careers. At a dance studio that was used for ‘Dancing with the Stars’, Audrey became a company dancer for a Russian ballet troupe that had its roots in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Carly helped the artistic director write and choreograph an ensemble sword battle for an original ballet that included spirits and faeries flying on wires and a magic act by a Las Vegas magician. Carly then began developing her own short films – one was edited at the studio of screenwriter Terry Rossio (Pirates of the Caribbean), and another was a music video for Neil Gaiman’s ‘Problem with Saints’. “We got to work with incredible talent,” said Carly. “Our friends were stunt performers featured in TV shows (two friends landed roles as Power Rangers), swordmasters, A-List screenwriters, editors, producers, cinematographers, actors, and a graphic artist at DC Comics. They helped us a lot.”

At the suggestion of Audrey’s agent, Carly and Audrey apprenticed at the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre. “Audrey wanted to train as an actress, and I wanted to be able to work with actors more extensively,” explains Carly. “When actors are speaking your lines, acting out your characters, and you get the audience reactions – it becomes a living thing.” Audrey performed monologues and stageplay excerpts, Carly directed a stage reading of one of her plays, and both worked together as running crew for a main show. This year in March, the Burbank theatre hosted a stage reading for Carly’s original stageplay ‘Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Unbound’, which will have its world premiere at the Newport Performing Arts Center in August, starring Carly’s sister Audrey in the title role of Mary Shelley.

“In between our projects, we were just trying to survive and maintain our sanity in an anxiety-riddled, urbanized desert,” Carly laments of living in LA. “The cost of living kept getting higher, and at a certain point it wasn’t worth it to stay anymore.” The Young sisters hope that they have finally found a balance on the Oregon Coast. “The environment here is so much better – we have trees and greenery again, and the beach is a short walk from our house,” says Carly. “Now we want to gather up the local performing talent of our new home. Next year we’ll launch Palladine Studios - a fun place where people can meet face-to-face, come together to work on projects, and hone their skills in acting, dancing, stage combat, film, or any other aspect of media production.” After Carly worked as an assistant director on the recent ‘Anton in Showbusiness’ at the PAC under director Marc Maislen, she felt ready to take on the challenge of bringing one of her original scripts to the stage.

‘Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Unbound’ is the real-life story of melancholy teenage writing prodigy Mary, who runs away with her lover, radical poet and science enthusiast Percy Shelley, and Mary's naive aspiring-starlet stepsister Claire tags along, leading them to the retreat of her idol, bad-boy celebrity writer Lord Byron. Together, they form a group of intellectuals who call themselves 'The Elect'. When Byron issues a challenge to write a frightening story, Mary weaves their personalities, and her own tragic experiences, into a literary patchwork. But her creation also foreshadows things to come, for the very people who have given her inspiration will become sources of heartbreak...and tragedy.

“I wanted to write about Mary Shelley not only because the descriptions and images of her made me think of my sister Audrey, but also because I could identify with her on a personal level as well,” says Carly. “She began writing professionally at a young age, and needed to connect with others who were just as creative and forward-thinking. Mary’s mother was England’s first radical feminist, Percy was essentially a free-love hippie, while Byron was a swaggering rockstar obsessed with his public image and dealing with star-struck groupies like Claire. We tend to think of these as fairly modern issues and concepts, but it actually originated during the 1800’s with people like Mary, and those in her circle of friends and family. They influenced her to write what is, arguably, the first science fiction story ever.”

‘Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Unbound’ will be playing for 6 shows across two weekends in the Alice Silverman Theatre beginning August 15. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.coastarts.com or call 541-265-2787. Keep up to date about the Young sisters by checking www.palladinestudios.com.

The ‘Mars/Barsoom’ series by Edgar Rice Burroughs is the definition of a pulp adventure– a fast-paced tale about a human man who finds himself transported to another world, where he punches and hews his way through hordes of monsters to rescue a beautiful princess. The structure resembles a faerietale, yet is laced with science fiction technology such as environmental manipulation. Thought to be inspired by ‘Gulliver of Mars’ by Edwin Lester Linden Arnold (about a soldier who goes to Mars and marries a princess named Heru), it paved the way for future planetary romances like ‘Dune’ and ‘Star Wars’, and even had a profound effect on early comic book protagonists like ‘Superman’ (who, like John Carter, adopts a foreign planet as his home, and discovers that his physiology in this new environment gives him extraordinary agility and strength).

However, there are mature themes in the ‘Mars’ books that are easy to overlook – sex, religion, race, prejudice - which I believe make it unique to all stories that came before or after, and elevates it from the category of juvenile fantasy to which it has been assigned.

The first book, ‘A Princess of Mars’, has a frame-story: Edgar Rice Burroughs describes his ‘mad’ uncle, John Carter, a man who claims to have traveled to Mars. This leads into the words of John Carter himself, from his memoirs, which relates his adventures on the red planet.

It was imperative that I establish a mechanism by which the audience would accept the scenario of a soldier astral-projecting himself to another planet. I needed them to forget what they think they know about Mars (i.e. the lack of humanoid aliens, vegetation, and the long-debunked theory of the Martian canals), and be willing to suspend their disbelief. 

To me, the ‘Mars/Barsoom’ books always had a slightly tongue-in-cheek, ‘tall-tale of the American West’ style to them. I did not want John Carter’s adventure to be a grandiose lie told for the entertainment of his nephew (one of the reasons I liked Carter was his unswerving truthfulness), and I did not want it to be revealed at the end as ‘all a dream’, a figment of his imagination, because that device is a betrayal of our emotional investment. Of any fiction genre, Fantasy is the one that needs the most grounded psychological framework to create conflict which mirrors our own. With this is mind, I decided to develop the frame-story of Burroughs relating the tale, and I portrayed John Carter’s adventure on Mars not as fact, but as delusion caused by emotional trauma. This was not too far of a stretch from what was already there – after all, the description of Arizona in the opening chapters foreshadows the description of Mars, and the Apaches he encounters clearly foreshadow the Red Martians.

In the book, John Carter states that he does not remember any childhood, has always looked to be a man of about 30, and never ages. All we truly know of him is that he is a soldier, a Confederate captain in the Civil War. This lack of backstory was no doubt a purposeful attempt on the part of Burroughs to avoid lengthy exposition that would delay the introduction of Martian society, and at the same time forge messianic parallels (John Carter’s initials are ‘J.C.’, and ‘about 30’ parallels with the age of Jesus when he began his ministry, only to be crucified and resurrected at the age of 33). But this is where any adaptation of ‘Mars’ would immediately encounter their first challenge: how do you depict such an enigma as a relatable main character? John Carter is our perspective and our guide as we enter Mars, a strange and complicated world –wondering who it is we are following could alienate us emotionally from his struggle to win the hand of the princess.

As a Confederate soldier and proud antebellum gentleman, we might initially assume that Carter is an elitist fellow, and suspect him to have the faults that generally follow: racism, misogyny, and religious intolerance. However, this is repeatedly shown to not be the case: Carter, if anything, takes every opportunity to praise the beauty, strength and honor of people who differ from him physically and culturally. He even makes favorable comparisons to Native Americans, Africans, and the brave women that he knew back on Earth.

Distilled down to its core, the ‘Mars’ series is about superiority complexes. The various factions of Mars each venerate a certain virtue to the exclusion of all others, and believe this makes their own culture to be morally superior. Because Mars is a dying planet where resources are limited, they use this as justification to kill and make war upon other factions. These factions are portrayed as differing ‘races’, but in fact seem to represent differing classes.

The Green Martians are a Spartan-like race, who value physical strength above anything else. They cannot create, only destroy: they inhabit deserted, crumbling cities, and make war upon other races in order to seize their resources and enslave others. This parallels the settlers who came to America and claimed it as their own, using their military might to force the natives out of their ancient communities, and capturing men and women in Africa to work their seized lands as slaves. The fur of the white ape was described as being a symbol of leadership among the Green Martians, and their food was also described as being pale, which to me symbolized this parallel - I made a slight alteration to strengthen it, which is that I depicted the abandoned cities as having once belonged to Red Martian natives, not a lost race of White Martians as the book described. I felt justified in this change because the Green Martians were at conflict with the Red rather than White Martians (I also felt the Therns should be the only White Martians, to avoid confusion).

The Tharks pride themselves on their bureaucratic discipline and sense of justice, while their enemies, the Warhoons, are anarchic savages who dismember their victims and keep their limbs as ghoulish trophies. Both are sadistic in nature, and seek to defeat ‘softer sentiments’ such as kindness. These represent the two conflicting sides of warfare: order and chaos. Carter, fittingly, joins the Tharks (the soldier profession) and rapidly climbs the ranks with his natural strength, which is a parallel to his career path on Earth.

The Red Martians, by contrast, are creators and builders - they value invention, technological progress, empirical expansion, and beauty. But they also have two warring factions: one which builds for glory and to reward conquest (Zodanga) and one which builds for the shared benefit of all in peaceful pursuits (Helium). Helium is the one placed in the most favorable light, because they fight to defend equality, while the Zodangans fight to maintain their wealth-divided hierarchy and racial hatred of the Green Martians. This clearly parallels the idealistic opposition between the North and the South in the Civil War – the South had begun to develop a land-owning, slave-owning aristocratic class, while the North determined that this was a threat to the principals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness upon which the country was founded.

Carter himself is torn between the two: he comes from the aristocratic Southern class, and shares their love of courage, honor and sophistication. His awe of Martian ingenuity is tempered by a slight contempt of intellectuals (Carter’s most prevalent description of himself is as a man who does not ever stop to think before taking action, and his mistrust of intellectuals is clearly dramatized later on in the portrayal of the Kaldanes and the Mastermind of Mars).

Yet at the same time he does not seek to dominate others, showing compassion to all forms of life. He ends the book caring nothing for the massive wealth that he has attained via the gold mine – Carter fights for one thing, and that is love. So while the Heliumites may struggle to defend themselves from more ruthless opponents, Carter recognizes that they too fight for love, and therefore aligns himself with Helium rather than Zodanga.

The Therns are the religious order of Mars. They manipulate the faith of the Martians in the goddess Issus, luring the faithful to their false ‘heaven’ and enslaving them. Once enslaved, they use their captives for sex, labor, sacrifice, and food. Their desire to cloak their sinful natures is symbolized by the fact that, unlike any other Martians, they wear wigs and robes to hide the nakedness of their heads and bodies. They are the major enemy faction of the second and third books of the trilogy (represented by Holy Father of the Therns, Matai Shang, and his daughter Phaidor), which indicates that Carter has a particular problem with religious self-righteousness and hypocrisy. Carter repeatedly tells the reader that he is not a religious man, despite his parallels to Jesus – or rather because of them, as Jesus was a reformer whose adversaries were members of the religious establishment. 

By conflating Holy Father of the Therns Matai Shang with the old man at the atmosphere factory, I not only introduced the main nemesis of the series earlier, but was also able to foreshadow Matai Shang’s duplicity and gluttonous nature by having him offer a table full of food to Carter and his companions.

On Mars, John Carter can use his one main talent, fighting, to save the world from death, win the respect of warring factions and unite them, and claim a smart, compassionate, beautiful woman as his own. He gets to live happily ever after.

On Earth, John Carter is helpless against these forces. He loses the war, he loses his fortune, he loses his friend Powell. And in my version, he also loses his Native American wife and child. He has nothing.

Carter’s Mars delusion is a purposeful attempt to deny the tragic reality, in return for reality denying him the triumphs and Happily Ever After he desires. Everyone still living in the Earth reality who desires for him to snap out of his psychological retreat is therefore – intentionally or not - an antagonist: they are luring him back to the game of superiority, which Carter refuses to play.

Having decided that this was the frame-story that would need to be developed, I needed to create the ‘real’ versions for each of the characters:

-Dejah Thoris = Dyani, “Thorn”. In the book, John Carter has his out-of-body experience in a cave, and when he returns to consciousness on Earth 10 years later, he finds corpses hanging from the ceiling of the cave, and the mummified body of a Native American woman with a pile of greenish powder. It is implied that his out-of-body experience was, perhaps, the result of the woman drugging him with the powder, but who she was and her reasons for doing so are never explained. So instead I introduced Dyani, a beautiful Native American woman (‘red princess’), who Carter rescues from soldiers in the same way that he rescues Dejah Thoris from the Tharks. Dyani visits him in the cave to heal him of an injury, does still drug him (a parallel to the radium powder she is forced to make in the dark pits of Mars) but it is only to dull his pain as she uses a thorn to stitch him up (he nicknames her ‘Thorn’, which is later garbled into ‘Thoris’). The yellow moss that she uses as a cushion for him turns into the yellow moss of Mars.

Because of Dyani’s use of medicine, Carter imagines her as a scientist on Mars. Note that I did not just come up with this characterization myself - in the books she was not only captured while onboard a scientific mission to chart the atmosphere, but she was also very knowledgeable about the details of Martian technology, chemistry, geography, and Earth. All of the dialogue along these lines is taken directly out of the book, except for the little backstory details I added about her father being the astronomer to have discovered Earth, and that she had dreamt of traveling there someday – this was done to establish a connection with Carter, who stated early on that he always felt an irresistible attraction toward the planet Mars. Dejah's scientific expertise becomes crucial at the end of my script, where I have Dejah fixing the malfunctioning atmosphere factory, not a group of random engineers as in the novel.

I felt no need to diminish Dejah’s role as a princess, nor did I wish to diminish her sexuality in any way – I see nothing wrong with Carter imagining his wife as a sexy princess. But since the narration repeatedly stated that women on Mars were armed and capable of defending themselves when necessary, I also did not see anything wrong with describing Dejah participating in the action a bit more. In the book, the description of Dejah’s trappings are sparse: it says that she wears sandals (made from zitidar hide), jeweled ornaments that do nothing to hide her nakedness (I determined that the jewels would be turquoise, due to their use among the southwest Native Americans, and to symbolize water), and her long mass of dark hair is worn in an elegant coiffure. But later, she pulls a great diamond pin from her hair, and uses it to carve a map of Mars into the solid marble floor. If she had at least one huge diamond sheathed in her hair, I could not see any reason why she couldn’t use it as a weapon. I also didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t have two.

I did not like the introduction of Kantos Kan as the Heliumite soldier Carter meets in the dungeons of Warhoon, as he did not seem to serve any real purpose other than to help him become an air scout in Zodanga, a sequence which was equally unnecessary and would have slowed down the finale. I already intended to have Tars Tarkas and Sola follow Carter into the Warhoon arena, since theirs was the friendship relationship that needed to be strengthened (and because I couldn’t have main relationship characters disappear for too long). I almost got rid of the Kantos Kan role altogether, but then I realized that his dialogue about Dejah Thoris sounded strangely paternal. Since I had already added the backstory detail of Mors Kajak, Dejah’s father, being a scientist, I figured that he could be the mentor who teaches Carter to operate the fliers instead - and because I replaced the guardian of the atmosphere factory with Matai Shang, I needed someone who could be left in charge of the post (and someone who could become the target of villain Sab Than’s wrath in the finale).

The Red Martians are depicted as hatching from eggs, and it was stated that there was only one mammal, very rare, upon Mars – meaning that the Red Martians were not mammals. Since the Malagors were described as being red birds, and there was already precedence for the white apes evolving into the Therns, I decided that the Red Martians were an avian race evolved from the almost-extinct Malagors.

-Tars Tarkas = Powell. In the book, Carter finds a gold vein with a fellow soldier and miner named James K. Powell. Because slavery was the preeminent issue of the Civil War, and because I wanted prejudice to be the major point of contention between Carter and his family, I decided that Powell should be a freed slave – specifically, the former slave of a ‘family friend’, Hal Powell (equivalent of Tal Hajus), who raped and killed his wife Gracie (Gozava). On Earth, (Toby) Powell dies at the hands of racist soldiers, leaving his daughter Sally (Sola) in the clutches of Hal and his bitter wife, Sandra (Sarkoja).

On Mars, he lives to rescue Sola and defeat Tal Hajus, replacing him as a person of power and authority, and will be saved from the Martian ‘afterlife’ by Carter. He will also appear in another form: the Black Martian prince, Xodar.

I wanted to base The Green Martians on an actual creature Carter could encounter in Arizona – preferably a green, red-eyed creature who laid eggs, and had horns or facial protrusions of some kind. In the book the Thark hatchlings are described as having eyes that moved independently of each other to see forward and back, so my first thought was that some sort of chameleon-like reptile made an impression on Carter in Arizona. But when I began my search, a monstrous grasshopper appeared: the Red-Eyed Devil, Neobarettia Spinosa. It had six limbs, which fit perfectly with the six-limbed Green Martians, and its habitat included only three states: Texas, Nevada, and Arizona. The only part that I chose to add to increase the parallel is to give wings to the female Green Martians.

-Sab Than = Sebastian Carter, Than Kosis = Kevin Carter. I had decided that Carter’s romantic rival, Sab Than, should be Carter’s brother Sebastian, the father of his nephew. I realized that Mors Kajak and Tardos Mors had inherited names of inverted order from Than Kosis and Sab Than, and decided to use it as an example of the difference between Zodangan and Heliumite’s attitudes toward their heirs. This provided a good motivation for Sebastian as a second son who wanted to use Carter’s mental state as an excuse to steal away his inheritance.

-Phaidor = Faye Doren, Matai Shang = Matthew Shane. In ‘Gods of Mars’, Phaidor is a female Thern, spoiled daughter of Matai Shang, who becomes obsessed with marrying John Carter. It made perfect sense to make her the woman that Carter is expected to marry, who he spurns in favor of marrying the very not-proper Native American woman. This provides further reason for Carter not to return to reality – for now that the wife he loved is dead, Faye is waiting to ensnare him, and will use ‘Father’ Matthew Shane to convince him that this is what he must do.

-Thoris Llanna = Tala.I determined that his son Carthoris from the books was a problematic character. His name resembles awkward celebrity mash-up names that ‘Bennifer’ or ‘Brangelina’, and also sounds uncomfortably like a part of the female anatomy. Also, as tempting as it would be to parallel Burroughs with Carter’s Martian son, we really don’t need a ‘Carter Jr.’ jumping around and distracting attention from our lead. But introducing his daughter Tara earlier than the books, endowed perhaps with some of her father’s abilities, was a very interesting prospect. Tara is the only female protagonist of the series, and the strongest female character other than Sola and Thuvia. ‘Thuvia, Maid of Mars’ was a great disappointment to me, but I would love to adapt ‘Chessmen of Mars’ – so Tara will be taking over both the role of Carthoris and Thuvia).

Lastly, there are some moments where I increased the level of violence – mostly to do with the actions of Zad (who kills the thoat rather than strikes it, to provoke the fight with Carter) Tal Hajus/Hal Powell’s sexual violence (and the subsequent loss of his arms), and Sab Than’s suicidal attack on the atmosphere factory (which I intercut with a sex scene not found in the book between Dejah and Carter, since that was the culmination of their relationship arc - and because I had moved up the atmosphere crisis, Dejah needed to have lain Thoris Llana’s egg in Carter’s absence, so that his daughter would be grown in the sequel).

I believe Fantasy and Horror to be an inseparable pair: the light is always in danger of being snuffed out by overpowering darkness. Fantasy lures us in with visions of beauty, so that we know what is at stake when Horrific ugliness inevitably marches to destroy it. A sense of horror is what I wanted most to emphasize in my adaption of ‘Mars’, and thankfully the foundation already existed - I only needed to make slight tweaks in order to make it work.

 Almost ten years ago, during one of my hunts at the library, I noticed a new section – a small bookshelf stuffed with manga. Among the titles was the manga spinoff by ‘Sandman’ illustrator Jill Thompson, titled ‘Death at Death’s Door.’ When I took a look inside, I realized that it was related to ‘Sandman’, the DC Comics graphic novel written by Neil Gaiman which I had yet to read.

I loved the manga. Here was a funny, empathetic heroine who was the least-Grim Reaper ever, dealing with the repercussions of her emo brother’s bad decision to send an ex-girlfriend to hell, with her sisters Despair and Delirium acting as her helpers. It was an endearing and crazy story – I had never encountered anything like it, even in the weird world of anime. It certainly wasn’t the formulaic dreck that filled half the YA fantasy section.

Later, I was able to borrow the entire series of ‘Sandman’. The actual series was nothing like the manga – it was more serious in tone, and way, way darker. The characters were not idealized archetypes and ‘heroes’. These characters, whether they were humans, nightmares, faeries, dreams, monsters, gods, or anthropomorphic personifications, were really just... people. Sad, lonely, greedy, fearful, lost. The theme that connected all of them was the idea of endings.

In ‘Sandman’, everything dies when it changes too much. Mortals die when their bodies change beyond use. Gods die when no one remembers or believes in them anymore. The only thing that will exist as long as the universe are 7 concepts: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Desire and Delirium. These 7 concepts are personified to living beings as the Endless, 7 siblings who are guardians of their domain and guarantee that the universe is in a constant state of change. The Endless are differentiated from humans in that their physical bodies are immortal, and from gods in that they do not rely on belief for power and life. But while their ‘concept’ will exist until the end of time itself, their ‘point of view’ (their personalities) can die and cease to exist.

To explain, let’s assume that there are infinite parallel universes. In this universe, you are the result of billions of factors all interconnected. Now, if you could peer into a parallel universe which deviates only slightly from your reality, you made different choices that changed the plot of your life or affected your lifestyle, or different scenarios occurred - but ultimately, your doppelganger is still recognizable as being you, albeit dealing with different circumstances. But if you peer further out, into increasingly different universes where ever more factors are changed, your identity becomes less clear. Now you have a different name, a different childhood which shaped you. You inherited different genes from your parents, so you look and act different. Maybe you have different parents altogether. Are you still the same person? At what point do ‘you’, as a concept, cease to exist?

This is the very heart of the dilemma for the lead character of ‘Sandman’, who goes by many names including the one in the title of the series, but is primarily known as Dream. When we first meet Dream, he is equipped with all his articles of power, and is returning from a ‘battle’ of sorts – a disaster in a far-off universe which has exhausted him. Because he is in a weakened state, an evil human cult intent on enslaving Death mistakenly ensnares Dream in their spell.

What follows during Dream’s imprisonment is the decay of the Dreaming (the realm of dreams). This affects certain human characters in various ways – some people find themselves barred from the Dreaming, unable to sleep, while others are unable to wake up. Dream escapes, punishes his captors, tracks down his stolen articles of power, and then proceeds to go on a series of missions to fix past mistakes.

These mistakes were instances where Dream feels he let Desire (who happens to be his sabotaging bully of a brother/sister) get the best of him, causing him to misuse his power for selfish reasons. Dream, when he is not overcome by emotions, tries to be a fair and balanced ruler, and takes his role as the King of Dreams very seriously. However, his personification is defined by more than his devotion to his work – he is also defined by his brooding loneliness (Despair) and his cruel, impulsive rage (Desire).

He spends most of his imprisonment consumed with plans for revenge and taking back his power, which he executes in short order. But then what?

His work once kept him so busy that he did not have time to doubt himself. But now he reflects on his past actions. He feels emotions he never did before – such as guilt. This is a change to his personification, and therefore threatens his very existence.

This incarnation of Dream has repeatedly let his desire for love and companionship tempt him away from his duties, and he knows that this is wrong. But it is part of his nature, and he cannot help it – he can’t just reboot himself with different parameters, and yet that is exactly what the job calls for. Yet, he also cannot be an effective ruler if he always doubts his decisions. Whether he consciously admits it or not, Dream knows his death will come soon, and that he will be replaced. In the meantime, he tries to do everything he can to prepare his realm for the transition of power.

In order to own up to his responsibilities, Dream releases Nada, a previous lover, from hell. He prevents the Vortex from destroying our universe (it can be surmised that he was dealing with a Vortex situation when he was captured, thus explaining why he was weakened – but we will only know once the new ‘Sandman’ prequel-series has been completed by Neil Gaiman). He helps his sister Delirium locate their lost brother Destruction, and in doing so gets to spend quality time with lonely Delirium. Having once denied his immortal son Orpheus’ plea for death after the Furies left him nothing but a disembodied head, Dream finally helps him die – but because he has spilled family blood, the Furies are now obligated to kill Dream. And a baby named Daniel, who found his way into the very nexus of the Dreaming during his gestation, is kidnapped by Dream and chosen as his heir.

When I finished reading this series, I immediately thought about how it could be adapted to film – and it was a fascinating puzzle. The cast was enormous, incorporating cameos from other DC comics, figures from multiple world mythologies, the 7 Endless, Dream’s servants in the Dreaming, not to mention all the POV humans who encountered Dream within their own bottle-arcs. The storyline wasn’t linear and covered all sorts of settings and timeframes. Even the genre and tone were all over the map – it was part horror, part mythology, part original mythology, part psychological drama, and part fantasy.

It is tempting to adopt an episodic format for ‘Sandman’, in order to incorporate all of these elements. But while I certainly would not be averse to a ‘Sandman’ television show, I do not feel that TV is the only suitable medium, nor am I convinced that it is the best. I can imagine a ‘Sandman’ TV show working in a ‘Twilight Zone’ format, where each episode was like a mini-movie – a bottle-arc about a character-of-the-week encountering a problem related to the Dreaming, in which Dream himself would have to intervene. But honestly, I think focusing that much attention on throwaway characters and scenarios would obscure the real core of the story: the arc of Dream himself.

The story was the journey Dream takes, from the imprisonment to his death – as Neil Gaiman summed up: “The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision.” That is the most succinct, concise logline/theme I have ever heard stated by an author. It is also a story that can be dramatized in a closed, 2-hr long arc. But in order to do this, the story would have to be stripped down to its essence.

In trying my hand at an adaptation, the first thing I decided was that the story would only be about the original characters Neil Gaiman had devised himself: the 7 Endless, Dream’s servants, Unity Kinkaid, Rose Walker, the Cultists, the Corinthian, and Daniel. I was also going to limit the setting primarily to here-and-now Earth and the Dreaming, with only the occasional glimpse of the other Endless realms.

The reason I decided this was simple: in a 2-hr film, there’s not a lot of time for setup. What is important is that the audience understands Dream. What are his powers predicated upon, and how far do they extend? What are his weaknesses? What were his flaws? What was important to him? What did it mean to be an Endless? Competing mythologies, pantheons and heroes from other DC properties required way too much explanation, and would only serve to confuse and overwhelm the audience.

I had to determine the threat for Dream. In the comic, he is presented as an immortal entity whose power knows no bounds when it comes to dreams, beliefs, and the nature of reality itself. The efforts of the Cultists to keep an Endless as a slave, and Doctor Dee’s attempt to use the Ruby against Dream, come across as pathetic – they cannot force him to bend reality to their will (some lucky characters in the comics got to ask a boon from him, as a sort of Customer Service offer – but only if he was feeling benevolent, not because anyone forced his hand). You can’t kill an idea, which is what he is, and you can’t control the power solely for your own benefit. As such, mortals who attempt to control Dream find that they have only the power to annoy him.

Gods are a little more equal to Dream, but even they have no ability to destroy him or conquer him. In other words, Dream has nothing to fear from any other entity – he’s rather impervious. Even the Furies would not have been able to kill him, if he had decided to run or put up a fight. While it’s an interesting idea that Dream is his own worst enemy, 2 hours of watching an immortal clean up a few of his own messes without obstacle and then set himself up to die would be intolerable. He needs a real problem, one that he didn’t create. He needs Kryptonite and a Nemesis, stat.

The Kryptonite that I chose is Rose Walker.

The graphic novel is vague about the nature of the Vortex, or what Rose/Unity has to do with it. Unity Kinkaid is put to sleep for decades as a casualty of Dream’s imprisonment, and we are told early on that during her sleep she was raped and impregnated. The child which resulted was Rose’s mother in the graphic novel, and it was revealed that the rapist was actually Desire. It is implied that Desire, by having sex with Unity, somehow caused her to become the Vortex, and that this trait was also passed down to Rose. Dream is determined to stop the Vortex from ripping the fabric of reality apart by sacrificing Rose in the Dreaming, but Unity takes her place.

While I found the Vortex arc of ‘The Doll’s House’ very confusing, it was crucial to the story. Dream is essentially the IT guy for the Dreaming, and the Vortex represents the virus/hack which could destroy the whole network. That’s a good problem for Dream to have.

Then there was the Main Relationship. Every story has one – the arc of the Main Relationship is like the spine of the story. The main thing that I found endearing about Dream was his doomed love affairs with mortals – it only made sense to let Rose take that role. Rose still needed to be the reason for the rift, but I simplified the Vortex concept, tying it to the power of the Ruby Dreamstone.

In the graphic novel, Doctor Dee takes the Ruby and uses it to blur the line between dream and reality (with horrific consequences), and intends to become a self-styled Dream Lord on earth. Dee knows that the Ruby is tied to Dream, so when Dream confronts him, Dee breaks the Ruby. Unfortunately for Dee, breaking the Ruby does not kill or de-power Dream – instead, it releases the power from the corrupted Ruby back to Dream himself.

I had the Ruby come into the possession of Rose Walker instead – and the jewel, I decided, was the key to the kingdom. With Dream unable to perform his duties, the Dreaming still needs a personification. Roses’ mother Unity  is trapped in the Dreaming, and Rose was born in the Dreaming herself, so the jewel resonates with her – she will be the new successor, once the last bit of power drains away from the imprisoned Dream. But two things happen: one, Rose accidentally uses the Ruby to bring her Nightmare to life... the Corinthian.

Second, Dream escapes, and wants his Ruby back. Dream realizes that she has been chosen as his successor, and he has two options: either he can kill her, and stay as the ‘Point of View’ for the Dreaming a little longer, or he will lose his powers completely to Rose, and thus become a mortal. So in my adaptation script, the ‘Vortex’ is the power struggle between Rose and Dream. Dream falls in love with Rose, but will not accept switching places with her or giving her his kingdom (the ‘change’ that he refuses).

The Corinthian, meanwhile, is his Nemesis. In the graphic novel, The Corinthian is a pet project of Dream, designed to be "A nightmare created to be the darkness, and the fear of darkness in every human heart. A black mirror, made to reflect everything about itself that humanity will not confront." The Corinthian escapes the Dreaming and becomes a serial killer, a career choice which disappoints Dream – Dream destroys and remakes him anew, and this Corinthian ends up defending Daniel from assassination at the hand of Loki.

In my version, the Corinthian needed to be tied in with the rest of the characters. Nightmares are designed by Dream to have certain effects on dreamer. So I portrayed the Corinthian as Rose’s nightmare, created in order to give her the courage to end a bad relationship. However, the Corinthian knew that once he had served his purpose he would be unmade by Dream and cease to exist – lucky for him, Dream was imprisoned. He takes residence in Unity Kinkaid’s dream world, since she never wakes up to banish him, and visits the object of his obsession – Rose – whenever she allows herself to sleep.

When Rose goes to sleep while in possession of the Ruby, the Corinthian is provided with an opportunity to escape the Dreaming altogether. By stealing the Ruby from Rose, he throws in his bid for the throne of the Dreaming – his dream is to free the Nightmares from Dream’s perceived tyranny, and become the Lord of the Dreaming. However, being a Nightmare, he cannot understand that Nightmares only exist for dreamers to confront their fears – detached from dreamers, they serve no good purpose.

Alone, against a fully-powered Dream, the Corinthian would be as much of threat to Dream as the misguided Dee was in the graphic novel. But Dream is weakened from his imprisonment and from Rose siphoning off his powers – also, the Nightmares have accepted the Corinthian as their champion (I replaced the mythological Furies with the Nightmares, to keep it all about the Dreaming). Without his powers, Dream’s rule is in significant peril.

In the graphic novel, Daniel is the child of DC superheroine Lyta Hall, also known as The Fury. When Dream kidnaps her child, she vows revenge and launches a siege to destroy the Dreaming. I had the Corinthian now taking over the role of Lyta in this regard.

But I felt it was appropriate for Rose to take over Lyta’s role as Daniel’s mother. This would actually solve the dilemma of the power struggle between Dream and Rose – their love ends up producing a child who is the heir by blood, and therefore has more right to the throne than either Rose or the Corinthian. I chose to have the Corinthian (not Dream) steal Daniel, hoping to co-opt their parental influence. Dream ends his life by sacrificing himself to the angry Nightmares, and Rose sacrifices her powers by breaking the Ruby and releasing the powers to Daniel, who becomes the new Dream. The Corinthian’s plan to control an Endless backfires, when Daniel’s first use of the dream-powers is to unmake the Corinthian.

That’s how I decided to do it. You might disagree with the changes I made, but this is my vision of what a ‘Sandman’ film would be like. While we wait to see what Warner Bros does with the property, you’re more than welcome to read mine.

Thanks!
Carly Bryann Young