Music Fiction Podcast ‘Dreamboy’ Deserves a Listen
Get ready for the strangest new musical addition from Night Vale Presents
Dreamboy, co-created by Dane Terry and Ellie Heyman, is the strangest musical podcast found on Night Vale Presents (NVP). Night Vale is known for its eerie and unusual productions led by independent creators, though Dreamboy is one of its kind. For any podcast fanatic, a nostalgic listener of traditional radio dramas, or a regular audiobook listener, the words audio fiction and musical don’t usually click. But Dreamboy is everything you wouldn’t expect from a cliche musical — or a fiction podcast.
By looking at the poster, one seems to feel hypnotized by the man in white, tempted to fall into what he’s falling into. Created by Sam Schanwald, Dane explains how they gave Sam some basic ideas for the illustration from which Sam created this mesmerizing black and white graphic. The image itself — without diving further into the story — gives the audience a sense of uneasiness, a feeling that haunts the entire show. Given that Dane Terry was willing to be interviewed directly over email, thankfully it’s possible to dive in further.
The storyline came from Terry’s play, Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons. Him and Ellie Heyman met through mutual friends in New York City, and ended up working together as Terry was looking for a director for the play-turned-off-broadway-show. They continued to work together after. Ellie had previously directed audio fiction — a few episodes of another NVP narrative fiction podcast, Orbiting Human Circus of the Air (also recommended). Through her pre-existing network, she and Terry heard NVP was looking for new shows. They pitched their story, had some meetings and began the project of turning Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons into a podcast.
She [Ellie Heyman] seemed to react to my work and I liked other things she had directed. — Dane Terry
The boy in the dreams
Dreamboy’s storyline follows protagonist Dane (yes, Dane Terry named the main character after himself), a struggling musician who’s just moved to Cleveland in search of creativity. He’s living at a friend’s, house-sitting while she’s away, desperately and uninterestedly working at the Pepper Heights Zoo. He knows little about this new town, except that people are a bit strange, he’s dreaming dreams about large fish, Grindr may be his only escape, and there lives a murderous zebra at the zoo called Zoe.
The first episode “Goodnight, Esmerelda” opens with the Milky Way Galaxy, a space-themed ride at the Pepper Heights Zoo. There’s a brief background given to the city of Cleveland, where John Stonefall, the oil tycoon, bought lots of land. You can hear Dane’s voice as narrator while he describes the city’s story, abruptly jumping into the dark dreams he’s been having:
Ever since I got to Cleveland I’ve been having this strange recurring dream. It always starts the same: I’m in the water hanging suspended and it’s deep water and it’s dark, I can’t see anything. The water is the same temperature as my body. It feels pleasant, my hair’s just gently swaying and then I feel a little bit of cold on my legs, and at first I think it feels sort of nice and then a little bit more cold, and then slowly I realize that something huge is moving underneath me […] I feel the coldness coming up more and more cold like the thing is getting closer closer, so I start to crash and I open my mouth the screen but the icy water rushes in it — hits the back of my throat and zooms down in my stomach. I feel it fill me up and then it zig zags its way through my intestines like a cold knife and just before it gets to the back of my ass fool I wake up! And I throw off the covers and I look down and my dick it’s rock hard […] Oh fuck! I’m late for work.
The story jumps from reality to dream and back. It happens suddenly but very naturally. The switch seems to be well-composed to an almost paradoxical moment where the listener perceives it as abrupt but isn’t surprised — rather, it’s pleasant. This skill gives the podcast an undertone of surrealism which is key to its story and purpose. Critic Wil Williams describes this eloquently: “Everything in the world of Dreamboy is surreal, but not quite surreal enough to feel too threatening.”
In a way, the listener keeps expecting something supernatural and horrific to happen. But does it? There are of course the dreams about large fish that Dane and his newly found friend/lover Luke share. But just the characters in themselves, the slow movements and developments in the story, keep the listener on edge.
Luke, for instance, is fascinating. He lives by himself across from Dane and they find each other on Grindr. Their very first meeting involves Dane watching Luke and the realtor from his window, being intimate. Soon after, he sees Luke get punched in the face and fall flat on the ground. Dane runs over to Luke’s house to check on him, and gradually finds that Luke is into getting beaten up after sex, and posting his bruises on social media. Luke has a nasal yet somber voice, reflecting his mysterious and quiet personality.
When asked how this eerie and surreal vibe was pulled off so smoothly without something big and horrific happening, Terry says it’s do with expressionism. He concentrates on the emotional reality “of a scene/story/moment as opposed to trying to be factual.” For him, this form of expression is more or less how humans experience the world. But there pre-exists “unknowns and mystery” in the real and fiction world which Terry and his team wanted to make visible. They “definitely intended to walk right up to the supernatural line and flirt with it without explicitly crossing it.”
I like the mystery. That’s how life feels. — Dane Terry
Hit me uncensored
Dreamboy has left no lines uncrossed when it comes explicitness — sexual and violent. There isn’t any hesitation when using explicit language, the causal swear words and what not. This form of un-censorship isn’t surprising or difficult to handle. Once the language transitions into what’s taking place in the physical world of Dreamboy and its characters’ lives, is when things get a bit intense.
Especially with Luke, and Dane and Luke’s sexual relationship. As mentioned earlier, Luke likes engaging in violence after sex and showcasing it on social media. At first, Dane’s a bit estranged with the idea but he slowly warms up to it. It almost becomes exciting for him. In Episode 4 “Blue Hand,” there’s a sense of climax between Luke and Dane, in how Dane is finally opening up to the freeness and vulnerability of sex.
Terry says their choice to be explicit with sexual themes was a conscious one. They knew from the beginning that “realistic gay sex” was always part of the show. Especially Terry wanted to be open and honest about his own personal sex life — because he believes stories often avoid sex (the kind that isn’t visually pleasant to majority), and is made “glossy and unreal.”
It was important for us, as members of communities marginalized precisely for their specific sex, to give accurate portrayals and be emotionally honest. — Dane Terry
With the prevalence of social media and especially Grindr in the story — how Dane and Luke find each other — Dreamboy wanted to touch upon the overwhelming power these tools possess in creating whole worlds for their users. Terry explains: “Many of us spend hours and hours each day on our phones and I wanted to depict not just the rote, compulsive search for sex/connection/validation that so many people experience with sex apps, but also the weird wonder these apps can bring into our lives.”
Zoe the zebra
Zoe the Zebra is the center of the podcast. This element of the story pushed it to the very level of weirdness it’s at. While it’s clear the Dreamboy team willingly incorporated some real-world issues in the story’s themes, like LGBT perspectives of the world we live in, it was curious to find out whether the theme of “saving” Zoe that fell across the show was reflecting the larger subject of animal rights.
There are a few other characters in the show, specifically a trio of young girls who might as well take the embodiment of just one character, who are highly suspicious in the beginning but soon turn out to merely push the agenda of saving Zoe the Zebra. We find out as part of the story’s background that Zoe had in fact participated in a gruesome murder — a murder of a young boy, who accidentally fell into Zoe’s vicinity, and a boy Zoe mauled to death.
As a consequence, the town wants to “put Zoe to sleep” for this horrendous act. The girls’ trio, who resemble creepy cookie-selling Girl Scouts, are against this and will do anything to save Zoe. They eventually convince Dane and Luke to join their cause, with more the curiosity these girls create from their almost ghostly demeanour than the cause itself.
The first time Dane meets them is in the first episode “Goodnight, Esmerelda” in a grocery store. Dane is observing the dark corner of the store where the bakery lies and so does his pie. In the shadows, unexpectedly, he sees “them.”
They had doll eyes over thin smiles. They’re all wearing matching uniforms and they all have different patches.
“Are you selling something?”
“No. But if you’d like to donate, we’d be most appreciative.”
“Do — oh, so you don’t have cookies? I just thought, you know, bakery section, Girl Scouts, may you have — “
“We are not affiliated with the Girl Scouts of America.”
Zoe and her unfortunate story provided a backdrop to Dreamboy. When asked where this idea of a zebra mauling a child to death came from, Terry says, it “came to me after I found a fuzzy black and white striped sweater on the street in a pile of free clothes in NYC.” This was before the show’s production, but the zebra stayed with Terry and “she [Zoe] walked into the Cleveland story like it was an old friend.” Terry confesses there was no intentional connection between Zoe’s story to animal rights after all.
Production map
Given the expansive story map interwoven by strange and complex characters, it’s difficult to understand how the creators managed to give the show an undertone of simplicity and relatability. Terry describes he began by throwing ideas for scenes, characters and plots from which Ellie and him drew up a structural map of things they wanted to include. This led to a first draft written over a week or two — with the occasional off-track “tangents and turns” — after which they met again. Discussing the draft out loud together was sort of an “editing session” that helped “illuminate what worked and what didn't.” The second and final draft came from this discussion which usually made it to studio production.
Once recording began with the text and narrative elements in place, the foley and music were added. The podcast’s engineer, Christopher (Chris) Weingarten, managed most of the sound design with Dane. Ellie and Creative Producer Ashlin Hatch were always in the room for the music, though. Their reactions helped Dane and Chris know what was working. The last steps were to add orchestral arrangements, “tighten it all up and boom.”
So in short, Ellie and I mapped my ideas onto a cogent narrative structure. Then I wrote, performed and composed, and she directed. — Dane Terry
Music in musical
Dreamboy is a music-fiction podcast. It’s interesting how Terry’s background as a musician interplays with the podcast’s production. He explains, “Dane the character is a musician crashing in Cleveland from NYC. That is based in reality. I actually did stay at my friend Emily’s house in Cleveland for awhile, and I am obviously a musician.”
Music in this podcast isn’t merely a song here and there representing various happenings in the story and characters’ lives. Music exists unconditionally. You’ll hear a quiet tune in the background when something doesn't feel right, and in the next moment you’ll hear Dane’s insecurities flooding up in an intensely vocal number. A favourite one has to be in Episode 6: “Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons” when Dane is obsessing over why Luke isn’t texting him.
Terry sees himself as a musician first. And this allows him to “access worlds and stories first through a filter of pure emotion/mood.”
I think it definitely affects his day to day perceptions of reality. Like when he experiences anxiety about Luke not texting him back as an opera in his head, and how a few of my (also his?) songs populate the episodes in particularly emotional scenes. — Dane Terry
By the end of story, Dreamboy successfully lets the listener feel as if they are Dane, Luke, or the Girl Scouts who aren’t really scouts, and sometimes even Zoe the Zebra. Terry acknowledges this purpose — “We wanted the way we told you the events to be inseparable from the way Dane felt about it.”
