"I'm never setting foot in the theater again," Julia Kent announces. As a senior theatre major, this comes as a surprise. After all, Kent has spent the past four years training for a life in the theater, and years before that dreaming of what such a life might entail.

But it's a scripted line. In a play. Voiced from a stage. And Kent's abandon is just as rehearsed as that intentionally blundered tour jete only moments before.

It is incongruities such as this that exemplify Life's Dream, an avant-garde piece that pokes and prods at what theater really is and what it's capable of. In other words, it's theater for theater folks. But according to cast member Oliver Donahue (senior-theatre), the play's conclusions might "offend anyone who cares about the art behind the theater." What exactly does that mean? It means that Life's Dream is a sparse, critical, questioning, politically charged production that's not going to let any audience member get away with complacency.

A twisted adaptation, in the loosest of sense, of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Life's Dream was written in the 1930s by Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca. This production -- Kent's senior thesis project through the Schreyer Honors College -- will be performed at 5 and 8 p.m. tomorrow and 8 p.m. Sunday in the Playhouse Theatre. Admission is free.

Kent, who became interested in Lorca and Spanish avant-garde theater after a semester in Madrid, said the double-duty responsibility of acting and directing has been rewarding, but expectedly draining.

"Working with 20 college kids is just as crazy as 50 four-year-olds," said Kent, who once directed heaps of boisterous kids in a community production of Guys and Dolls Junior.

Fortunately, Kent's not at the wheel alone. She's got support in assistant director Natalie Melle McCabe (sophomore-theatre), who stressed that Life's Dream will be a new experience for most audience members because it removes all of the spectacle and flashiness that theater-goers may be used to.

"It's trying to get to the truth that underlies theater and get to what theater can do as a movement," Melle McAbe said. "Theater can advocate ideas and protest changes. It can be a place to spark discussion and debate, a place where ideas begin."

As a testimony to theater's revolutionary capabilities, Life's Dream shines. Along with the rest of Lorca's work, Life's Dream was banned in Spain until the 1970s because Lorca's leftist leanings and homosexuality were deemed too politically contentious by Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces.

According to Kent, Lorca wrote three acts for Life's Dream, but never saw a production during his lifetime. Also, the second and third acts were subsequently lost. Thus, this weekend's performance includes only the play's first act, which Kent emphasized definitely stands on its own as a piece of art -- but an interactive piece of art at that.

"The point of this show is to figure out what a play can do that a movie can't, and how a play can provide an experience for an audience that a movie can't," Kent said. "We make the audience play a part. They have a journey in this, too. The point is to be really empowering, and say that you have the power to change your world and be active in political, human rights and social issues. Art can be something you use as a tool. It doesn't just have to be entertainment."