Kalika Valentine-Erickson/ Winonan

“Ownership of a single-family home, a good paying job, a white picket fence.” Jim Williams used this image to describe the “American Dream.” He said it can be “hard to define” since the word dream is “subjectable.”

Jim Williams and Heather Williams, both professors in the department of theatre and dance (THAD), held a lecture as part of the Consortium of Liberal Arts and Science Promotion (CLASP) series promoting the three performances being held by the department this semester.

“Assassins,” “Leaving Iowa” and “August: Osage County” all have one thing in common: the “American Dream.” Heather Williams said, “All three plays sustain the American myth in a distinct manner.”

The performances of this semester’s THAD department have incorporated varying visions of the American dream.

“The plays represent three different types of what the ‘American Dream’ is,” Jim Williams said. “The myth of the ‘American Dream’ is the heartbeat of the plays.”

Emma VanVactor-Lee, a sophomore theater major, said “Assassins” was “the pursuit of the ‘American Dream’.” The play was from the perspective of either the assassins or would-be assassins of American presidents who were looking for fame and instant gratification in order to achieve their American dream.

“Leaving Iowa,” which premieres this week, is “stereotypical,” Rebekah Bailey, a junior theater and communications major, said.

Heather Williams said the show is comparable to the “American Dream” found in the television show, “Leave it to Beaver.”

The play is about a young man traveling across America to find a place to put his father’s ashes. While he is traveling, he has flashbacks to his childhood.

“The perfect family vacation was always more flawed than ideal,” Heather Williams said.

This play is the most like the definition of the “American Dream” most are used to, with a middle-class nuclear family containing two parents and a boy and girl child. Much of the play takes place in a car, which is a “symbol of prosperity,” Heather Williams said.

During the lecture, cast members of “Leaving Iowa” performed a scene from the preformance where Don, the main character, is talking to the ashes of his deceased father while having a flashback to a past family vacation with his mother, father and sister.

“August: Osage County” is a play which shows the “realization that there is no such thing as the ‘American Dream,’” Jim Williams said.

All three performances show different perspectives of and variations on the typical “American Dream.”