Preview: Through song and astronomy, two actors will help viewers project their dreams into new constellations and rival the ancient Greeks at story-telling. April 19 at the Adler Planetarium.

By Lawrence B. Johnson

The stars are dream-catchers and story-tellers. Humans have always thought so, hence the mythic characters and lore written into the constellations. But, hey, if the ancient Greeks could puzzle out stories in the stars, why can’t we – and have a ball doing it? No wonder the community myth-making adventure on tap April 19 at the Adler Planetarium is called “Starball.”

Created 10 years ago by John Kaufmann and Dan Dennis, two young actors and amateur astronomers working at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, “Starball: A Dreamy Musical Astronomy Show” is both instructive and entertaining, a musical voyage to the stars through shared dreams and creativity.

“It’s a chance to learn about the night sky, then reinterpret it much the way ancient peoples did,” says Dennis, who composed musical settings for Kaufmann’s lyrics and provides accompanied to their songs on accordion and guitar. “Basically, what we – with the audience – are creating is a new mythology from our exploration of the night sky.”

This is the duo’s third “Starball” presentation at Adler. To get everyone on the same page, these two docent-entertainers begin with a short refresher on the main constellations – Orion, the Big Dipper, the really bright and familiar formations. Then comes the audience participation part, which Dennis guarantees (with a laugh) is absolutely safe and non-threatening. Great fun, actually.

The idea is that everyone in the audience writes down a recent dream. And if nothing comes to mind, or you’d rather not go there, just make something up. And you don’t sign these confessions. Heavens! The dream statements are folded, collected in a box, tumbled a bit and then pulled and read, one at a time. Now comes the cool part: Components of each dream are superimposed on the night sky, by means of a red laser pointer – an image from one dream sketched into one quadrant of the sky, another bit from another dream outlined in another part of the sky.

Show director Rachel Katz Carey offered an improv example: A lion from one dream leaps into a phone both from another, emerges as a frog from a third dream, springs into a swimming pool and pops up as a rubber ducky. “And that,” says Carey, “is why we celebrate Rubber Ducky Day.”

And everyone in the audience has watched this resonant new myth being traced element by element into the starry night.

“I’ve learned that people want to project their dreams,” says Dennis. “They also really want to understand the night sky and they love this shared process of myth creation, which is essentially no different from the Greeks and every other culture has done since the beginning of human society.”

Ironically, Dennis observes, it’s only by sitting in a darkened space that our eyes are opened to the canopy of stars.

“Because of electric lights and the way that has extended our day and our focus on activity, we don’t tend to see the night sky,” he says. “It’s not important to us any more. We suffer from light pollution. We don’t have the true night on which to reflect.”

Adds director Carey: “‘Starball’ is not only fantastic but important. We live in a world where everybody’s looking at a screen, plugged into Googleplex. Here we’re in a room with each other and creating something unique together. We’re working with our own dreams rather than stories we’ve been fed. I think people are hungry for this and don’t even know it.”

Related Links: 

• Location and performance times: Find it here
• Do your constellation homework: Check out this interactive sky chart
• Stories of the constellations: Read the traditional myths here
• Getting started in astronomy: Download your copy here

Photo captions: Home page and top: “Starball” creators and performers John Kaufmann (left) and Dan Dennis. Descending: Music and astronomy go hand in hand for Dan Dennis (left) and John Kaufmann. Connecting the celestial dots to create a story in “Starball.” John Kaufmann leads the audience on a starry quest. 

Tags: "Starball", Adler Planetarium