Student cast members of "To Dream About Wings" (left to right), Ariel Chen ’28, Kiyomi Ton '28, Andrew Park '26, and Vincent D'Angelo ’28, in rehearsal. Photo credit: Photo by Daeun Kim.
(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater and Music Theater at Princeton University presents To Dream About Wings, a new play by Princeton senior Stephenie Chen. The play explores dreams of many forms: from dreams of flight, America, and happiness to the haunting of loss. The production is directed by senior Wasif Sami. Performances are February 14, 15, 20, 21 and 22, 2025 in the Wallace Theater at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus. Showtime is 8:00pm each night.
To Dream About Wings follows two teenagers: Anna, who dreams of stability and a love that lasts forever, and Leo, who is destined to fly. After a fateful meeting at church, Anna becomes swept up in Leo’s ambition. But as his flying machine—his ornithopter—starts becoming a reality, she is faced with the fact that he must leave her. The play explores family dynamics in Asian American and immigrant households, how we live with grief both individually and together, and whether religion can do anything about the predicament of loss. The production contains depictions of falling from heights, discussions of death and mourning, and brief allusions to suicidal ideation.
The student cast includes Ariel Chen, Vincent D’Angelo, Ryan Gao, Seryn Kim, Andrew Park, and Kiyomi Ton.
Free and open to the public, tickets can be reserved through University Ticketing. The Wallace Theater is fully accessible with an assistive listening system. The February 21 performance will be open captioned. Guests in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at [email protected] at least one week prior to the event date.
Chen’s and Sami’s work on the project represents their independent work toward a minor in the Program in Theater and Music Theater, in addition to their major areas of study. Students earning a minor take the course “Introduction to Theater Making,” four other theater, music theater, music, or dance courses, and provide non-performing support for one or two other Program productions. They have the option to propose a senior project in spring of their junior year, which might be writing a new work, directing, performing, designing, stage managing, or producing a production; the Program’s season is primarily shaped by the interests and proposals of the students in the Program. Students’ senior projects are advised by the faculty with support from the professional staff in music, costumes, scenery, light, sound, stage management and producing. Any student can pursue the minor; no application or audition is required, and students with no prior experience are welcome.
Chen started writing To Dream About Wings in fall of her junior year in the course Introductory Playwriting, taught by award-winning playwright Nathan Davis. She was inspired by the children’s book series Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne. She initially began with imagining Leonardo DaVinci’s aspirations to fly, which evolved into a meditation on aspiration, religion, and grief. The story centers on two Asian American families, focusing on teens Anna and Leo, who is a DaVinci-like character. The play continued to evolve in the rehearsal room in collaboration with Sami. Sami has directed another new work, the Program in Theater’s fall production of a new play by senior Le’Naya Wilkerson, A Thread of Golden Ashes.
Chen is a computer science major who grew up in Hong Kong and Beijing, immigrating to the U.S. as a first-year student at Princeton. She is minoring in theater. She discovered theater late into her Princeton career, through a playwriting class taught by playwright Nathan Davis (who is her advisor on this project), and says she immediately fell in love with the medium. She is heavily influenced by playwrights Sarah Ruhl, Tony Kushner, and magical realists across different forms of media. On campus, she has acted in Grief Work, written and directed by Kenza Benazzouz ’24, a choreopoem which explored different ways grief, love and joy can manifest in the world. She adds that the process or work on that production has influenced her interest in community and movement-based theater.
Chen currently serves as a coach for Trenton Youth Theater, a co-curricular program for students from Trenton Central High School and Trenton Ninth Grade Academy. Chen was a recipient of the Tiger Baron Summer Award this past year, which provided her with funding to explore manifestations of awe, both landscape and human-made, natural and religious, in Iceland and Ireland. Academically, Chen works in the domain of computational neuroscience and is researching risk sensitivity in populations with and without neuropsychiatric disorders. Artistically, she hopes that her next project will be an exploration into how social realities constructed by capitalism and the omnipresence of film and television has affected individual psyches. After graduation, she hopes to continue writing and storytelling through theater and film, specifically probing where technology and the arts intersect, as well as creating and partaking in spaces rich with community.
Sami is an anthropology major from Hillsborough, New Jersey, and is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow in anthropology, through which he studies with Professor of Dance and Lewis Center Chair Judith Hamera as his mentor. He is also pursuing minors in theater and gender and sexuality studies. On campus, Sami has directed nine productions, including Heroides by Katie Hameetman ’23, Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger, and an adaptation of Medea by Wendy Wasserstein and Christopher Durang. He also directed and co-produced the play Theresa’s Breasts by Amber Palmer, which was presented in Princeton’s Carl A. Fields Center in October 2023 as an independent production. Sami and his co-producer, Emily Yang ’26, the lighting designer for this project, secured funding from Princeton’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Center and hosted talkbacks after each performance. He notes the process was an experience of queer inquiry, discovery, community, and joy.
In addition to his work on campus, Sami has supported work at McCarter Theatre on the Here There Are Blueberries national tour; Clubbed Thumb, a new play development company in New York City; the National Asian American Theater Company; Soho Rep theater company in New York; the Kennedy Center in Washington; and on the musical How to Dance in Ohio, which had a Broadway run during the 2023-24 season. Sami has worked with Trenton Youth Theater, serving as the year-long student fellow as a first-year student and most recently as the student director of the group’s anniversary showcase performance at Richardson Auditorium. He is a recipient of a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship to study Urdu in Madison, Wisconsin; a Martin A. Dale ’53 Summer Award to conduct research in Bangalore, India; and an Alex Adam Award from the Lewis Center to engage with queer theater and community in New York City and Bangalore last summer. As a performer, Sami is an improvisational dancer and solo performance artist and last May marked his first solo performance in New York City, which was presented at Grace Exhibition Space in the Lower East Side. After graduation, he notes that he hopes to move to New York City to continue creating theater and performance, including directing, teaching, moving, and above all, being in relation with others.
In addition to Sami, student members of the production team include Elena Milliken as set designer, Emily Yang as lighting designer, Irene Kim as assistant costume designer working under staff costume designer E. Keating Helfrich Debelak, Grace Wang as sound designer, and Sophia Vernon as stage manager with Melody Cui and Vivian Huang as assistant stage managers, mentored by junior Vera Fei.
Faculty project mentor is playwright Lloyd Suh with faculty members Nathan Davis as writing advisor, R.N. Sandberg as directing advisor, Jane Cox as lighting advisor, and Tess James as co-producer.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
