This Is Not a Dream

Directed by Gavin Butt and Ben Walters
Edited by Tom Frederic
Music by Morgan Quaintance
Original performances by Dickie Beau

Also featuring Dara Birnbaum, Nao Bustamante, Vaginal Davis, Cole Escola, Vincent Fremont, Alp Haydar, Holestar, David Hoyle, Kalup Linzy, Glenn O’Brien and Scottee.

“I LOVE THIS FILM. The best of the best performers in the western world keeping watch at their post on the vanguard. This isn’t pop culture b.s. THIS IS FUCKING ART!” Justin Vivian Bond

“The talking heads are generally terrific, unsurprisingly given that the majority are professional performers […] Best of all are the newly filmed performance pieces from Dickie Beau, who reimagines three monologues and transforms them through drag and lip-synch into arresting works.” Alex Davidson, Sight and Sound

View the original theatrical version of the film here.

DVD release was part of the Crossovers series of artists’ films, documentaries and dialogues reflecting the potential of marginal artforms and intense ideas within popular media. Purchase here.

Theatrical and gallery presentations

Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, London, 27 October 2011 as part of Trashing Performance
BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, 26, 27 March 2012
Suvilahti Performance Centre, Helsinki, April, 2012
Outfest, Los Angeles, July 19 2012
Dirty Looks, The Kitchen, New York, July 21 2012
Gaze festival, Dublin, 6 August 2012
MIX Festival, Copenhagen, 20 October 2012
Hackney Attic, London 28 and 29 November 2013
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, April 2014
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre, Buffalo, April 16 2014
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, April 23 2014
CUNTemporary Pride Festival, MIRO Kitchen Bar, Cyprus, 22 May 2014
Spill Festival, Ipswich Film Theatre, 2 November 2014
Just Like a Woman festival, Abrons Arts Center, New York, October 25 2015
PTV: Performance TV, U-Jazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 25 November 2017
Warehouse9, Copenhagen, December 4-6, 2020
Out of the Margins: Performance in London’s institutions from the 1990s – 2010s, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 30 August 2022 – 15 January 2023