Sitting in the corner of a cramped kitchen, I come to realize that I have a bit part in a production of “Hamlet,” I don't know my lines, and the first show is that morning. “Are we allowed to hold the script?” I ask. Why did I think that was allowed? I'm scanning the book for my lines. I have one early, and I mark it off in pink highlighter so I can find it easier when I'm on stage—if I'm allowed to hold the book on stage—and I repeat it to myself, but panicky, without remembering it at all. My brain is a sieve. I'm leafing through the book for the rest of my lines, also panicky, and wondering if there's an electronic version I can download and just search for my character name. I'm getting nowhere and time is ticking away. 

My brother Chris is in the living room and he's been checking out my part. He's way more calm and reads the first line to me. I read it back, but I'm just reading the text. “No,” he says, and he sings the first five words. Oh, I think, it's at a funeral. Oh, I'm delivering a kind of euglogy or hymnal. For someone named Giles. That's interesting.

“Giiiles,” I begin to sing. 

Chris shakes his head. “Hiiiiles” he sings.

It's written Giles but pronounced Hiles? How did Chris know? But I begin to sing it that way, holding the note, “Hiiiiiile...” and then, mid-note, as I realize what I'm singing, I jokingly raising my arm in a Nazi salute. Chris cracks up. “You should do that. No, you shouldn't do that.” “No,” I agree, as I begin to rush upstairs. “Imagine the headlines: BIT PLAYER DOES NAZI SALUTE IN LOCAL SHAKESPEARE PRODUCTION.”

The rest of the dream is trying to figure out what to wear as time is ticking away and I still don't know my lines.