Book, Libretto and Music: Matt Maxwell
Additional Music: John Findlay, Matt Horner, George Leach, Rick Tait and Michale Vassos

Throughout this outline, we have highlighted songs that are relevant to the narrative.

John Toney, a talented young Native singer-songwriter, has witnessed his best friend being shot and killed by police during a raid on a local bar. During his wrongful incarceration following this event, he is visited in a dream by a vision in the form of Golden Hawk (Hall of Dreams). She implores him to find his 'Dream Song', for only then will he be able to heal his heart and understand his purpose in life.

The following scene takes us to the gleaming office towers of the downtown core of a large bustling city. Julia, a young entertainment lawyer who is an important wheel in the Magicvision Corporation, sings of her love of the fierce, take-no-prisoners struggle in the corporate jungle (Welcome to the City). She is as brilliant as she is ambitious. Rathan Morely, the head of of the media empire, comes in for a brief meeting with her. They talk of the imminent album release of the company’s biggest star, Ali Husein. Julia expresses her concern that Ali’s sales have been falling off of late, given racist and xenophobic trends in the post-911 world.

Upon his release from jail, John ventures to the big city (Welcome to the City Reprise) where he encounters Kwasimat, a Native bag lady who seems to all appearances to be slightly deranged. But in her own peculiar way she reinforces the message of Golden Hawk.

John forms a new band and is “discovered” by Vanessa Morely, a talent scout from Magicvision Media Corp and adopted daughter of Rathan Morely. Vanessa is impressed by John’s ability to evoke profound emotions in his music (Falling) and she invites him to the CD release party of Ali Hussein.This is Magicvision’s last big push to breathe some life into their fading star’s moribund career (Magicvision). When John performs a song at the end of the party (Spirit Eyes), and rivets the assembled rich and beautiful with his musical and lyrical magic, Rathan and Julia realize his potential and sign him up to a recording contract. The marketing department has come up with a promo push that spins him in the following way: as John Firehawk, an artist that’s a hybrid of Justin Timberlake-like sensuality and a back-to-the earth Native sensibility (thus appealing to the growing legions of urbanites trying to rediscover a sense of the natural world and jump on the green bandwagon).

John’s career at Magicvision starts off in fine form – there is an instant chemistry between Vanessa and him. Vanessa is attracted to John’s head-in-the-clouds, feet-on-the-ground attitude towards life. He is aware that she comes from a totally different world than his; she has known nothing but the mansions and manicured lawns that are the preserve of the upper crust. Underneath her sophisticated exterior and her cynical, biting sense of humour, Vanessa has a big heart. Vanessa has never met anyone like John before. In her mind, she paints him bigger than life; she finds his music incredibly moving. As for John, Vanessa is the only person who genuinely cares about him. They are so very different, yet on a deeper, intuitive level, they are kindred spirits (The Flame).

To this point, Rathan, completely consumed with his tasks as president and CEO of Magicvision Media Corp., is unaware of the rapidly growing love between John and Vanessa. He can’t imagine that his daughter could have any interest in this young man whom he views solely as a commodity. When he stumbles across them in each other’s arms, he is appalled, but being cold and calculating, he immediately hides his displeasure. His mind goes into overdrive as he devises a way to drive a wedge between the two lovers. Rathan’s aversion to John becoming his daughter’s lover becomes clear in a scene that’s both moving and chilling: he opens a safe in his office and pulls out a photo of “Anna”, his lover of 20 years ago. He had hired this beautiful young Native woman to work as the maid for his wife and him. When she became pregnant with his child, he had arranged for her (paid off) dismissal and the surreptitious adoption of her daughter. When several years later she confronted him, saying she could no longer live in this deceit, he arranged for her “disappearnce” (You Were the Best).

Ali, who is by now severely depressed, is drinking away his sorrows. He has fallen out of favour with Magicvision Media and is watching the rapid demise of his career. He is jealous of John, but on another level, now that he’s on the outside looking in, he sees how John is being manipulated by Rathan in the same way that he was manipulated himself. As he sinks into an enebriated daze, he starts revealing, in a song-and-dance number, how phony life in the entertainment industry can be (Welcome to my Neighbourhood). Julia, whose sense of guilt has been piqued by a verbal tirade from Vanessa, decides to visit Ali to mend some bridges. When she enters his condo, she finds him lying unconscious on the floor, his wrists slit in a suicide attempt. She tends to him immediately, stopping the bleeding, and then calls an ambulance.

Julia, whom we discover has been Rathan’s mistress, has now seen first-hand how the pop world can be a mortal disease; moreover, she has recently found out about Rathan’s 20-year-old secret. She realizes that she has to terminate her relationship with Rathan and with Magicvision, and that she must inform Vanessa about her mother (Julia’s Decision).

Meanwhile, John has continued to get caught up in all of the trappings of life in the fast lane. Sensing an opportunity, Rathan arranges for two of the dancers from John’s video shoot to take John out on the town one night. Rathan then brings Vanessa to the bar where John has been revelling with the two women. Shocked and disgusted, she tells John that she never wants to see him again.

John lives the next weeks in emotional agony. One night, in the midst of fitful dreams (Dark Night of the Soul), Golden Hawk comes to John, telling him in her bizarre, cryptic manner, that he has lost his way. John takes this to mean that he should to make every effort to be reunited with Vanessa. He arranges a secret moonlit encounter with her outside her palatial estates (Star-Crossed Lovers) and wins her heart back with his sincerity and humility.

Vanessa goes immediately to her father and tells him that she has decided to move out and to start living with John (Confrontation). At this point, Julia and Ali appear at the door. Julia has come to confront Rathan and and has thus brought Ali along as protection. Just at this moment, John enters, ready to leave with Vanessa. Rathan, now in an alcohol-induced rage, pulls a gun from a drawer and starts brandishing it about (Tragedy). He aims it at John during a drunken rant. At the last instant, Vanessa surprises him by taking the weapon from him. After a brief struggle, Rathan shoots his daughter by mistake. Ali takes advantage of Rathan’s shock to strike him unconscious with a blow to the head. John, filled with abject pain and anger, cradles her in his arms. She slowly dies while singing her moving song (Vanessa’s Lament).

Suddenly, Kwasimat appears, iridescent, before John. She tells him that although Vanessa is gone for all time, he can yet know her in his heart. But first he must overcome his ‘inner enemy’. She takes John on a journey (Hall of Dreams Reprise) through the ‘Hall of Dreams’ into his own heart, where he finds Rathan threatening him (Rathan’s Song). After a violent struggle, John overcomes his nemesis. Dagger in hand, he has the opportunity to silence Rathan forever, but after deep soul-searching, lets him go. He turns his back on hatred and revenge.

Kwasimat now explains to John that the ‘Dream Song’ is not one song, but holds all songs in its breast. It is the song of healing which resides in the soul of all humankind (Song of the Heart). She says, “What is this life we lead but a dream itself, though shared by many. Like the rings of the cedar tree, layers of dreams within dreams. Know the Dreamer, whose thought is all creation, if you too would become a true dreamer.”

The set changes before our eyes into a funeral parlour. Vanessa’s coffin lies on a flower-bedecked dais. As the chorus sings the anthemic finale (Power of the Dream), we see Vanessa appear above the crowd with Kwasimat. Suddenly Kwasimat disappears and reappears instantaneously as Golden Hawk. Then Vanessa vanishes, transformed into a dove. Together, the two birds disappear into a wall of light.