I followed Tucson playwright Patrick Baliani as he climbed through Sabino Canyon in the crisp morning air. Maneuvering around the loose gravel, we searched for a spot away from the rigors of city life in order to discuss his latest play, Sabunana.

The unruffled desert setting was more than appropriate for our interview, for here was where Sabunana began. The play has perhaps come full circle for Baliani - beginning with a dream he had in 1995 while participating at a summer retreat for the 3rd Street Kids, a non-profit performing arts group that weaves together the talents of local artists and kids with and without disabilities. It will be his third production with this unique touring group that gives kids an artistic outlet and enables them to perform across the nation and internationally.

"I thought it was time to do a play that has nothing to do with disabilities," Baliani explains, referring to his two other 3rd Street productions (an adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author and his own Reckless Grace).

Sabunana is a fantasy play - a dream within a dream - which explores Jungian themes, the collective unconscious, and "dreams as they relate to living." Baliani purposefully juxtaposes waking life and dreaming life and asks which is more real. He also incorporates out-of-body experiences, an ingredient, he says, that emerged directly from working with the 3rd Street Kids.

"They experience them all the time. [Out-of-body experiences] are not just in the domain of dreams. When we have them, we call into question which has the higher claim of reality. The same is said of dreams."

Instead of thinking of dreams or out-of-body experiences as mere aberrations of life, Baliani explains, they allow one to take on the role of the other and gain a different perspective from a new vantage point. "That, of course, is what theater is, too. That cathartic source... seeing yourself embodied up [on stage]," Baliani says.

In fact, "Six Characters questioned the relationship between art and life, asking is art eternal and life transcendental? It is a play of relativity... the only realization of self is an interior one."

Baliani's adaptation of Pirandello's 1925 play used the kids' disabilities to emphasize that we, as humans, often understand others, not from that "interior self," but rather from a superficial shell. For instance, in writing Reckless Grace, Baliani asked the kids about their earliest memories, what they hoped to change in their lives, and the first time they ever felt different. To this last question, one of the kids recapped the first time she had ever had wine. Baliani concedes, "None of the answers dealt with disabilities; instead they were about the yearnings of life and human frailties."

While Six Characters questioned the relationship of art and life, in a vein similar to Hamlet, it also tore down that fourth wall in which theater separates the actors and the audience. Sabunana takes it one step further - breaking down the barrier between the conscious self and the multitude of selves we encounter in dreams. It is the "bedtime" version of Hamlet's play within a play, which was enacted solely "to catch the conscience of the king."

Concerning Sabunana, Baliani explains, "all of the characters fear some kind of limitation." This is perhaps a direct outgrowth of Baliani's own fears writing this third play for 3rd Street. "I was a little panicky... maybe we had done it all already, in terms of our artistic relationship?"

But he is grateful for this opportunity as a writer to work with them and a handful of UA English honor students, who helped flesh-out Sabunana. "I really do see it now as a completion. We've done this trilogy without ever planning to. ... I feel that I've transcended both their and my disabilities. They've become something we are no longer conscious of."

According to Pirandello, art transcends these limitations. Perhaps dreams do as well. Baliani admits, "When you recognize you're in a dream, you either try to force yourself to wake up, or you accept it and go with it."

Sabunana opens tonight at the Tucson Center for the Performing Arts and runs through Sunday, October 27. Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for children. For more information and performance times, call 622-4100.

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