Original music composed for the occasion is by J. Brian Post, who teaches music at HSU, and local performing artist Lila Nelson. Besides being a popular performer and songwriter (with a song currently featured on Neil Young’s web site), Lila is Jandy Bergmann’s younger sister. Several other Nelson sisters have been involved in HSU theatre in the past decade. “I changed all their diapers,” Bergmann claimed.

Among Lila’s compositions for Journeys Before Waking is a song that sets to music the words of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Brian Post used some of Nelson’s folk-influenced melody in his own more modernist contributions.

The photography that will be projected to further illustrate the landscape of the dreams is also original, created by Kevin Peer and Rosa Rashall of Lost Coast Studio. Both are experienced nature photographers; Peer created films for National Geographic and the National Park Service. For this project, Butcher explained, “the photographers went out with us to North Coast locations—the ocean, Mad River, a cave, a grassy field, the roof of a barn—where we imagined these dreams were happening.” Peer and Rashall used a unique process to create these images which included moving the camera during the slowly exposed shot to create a slight blurring effect, suggesting a dreamlike motion.