When UBC alum Jillian Reynolds moved back in with her parents at the peak of the pandemic, she stumbled across a journal from her teens. In it, she had created a world where people could take sleeping pills that would allow a factory called The Reverie to write and stage their dreams, unbeknownst to the pill's users.
In her podcast Dreamers, Reynolds spins this concept into a coming-of-age story centring on Lily Bliss, a high school student whose nightmares and fantasies begin to blur together once the same actor starts to appear in both.
Due to lockdown restrictions, audio format was the easiest way to bring the story of Dreamers to life — and given Reynolds’s journalism experience, creating a podcast seemed pretty feasible, with a bit of extra help.
“I think I truly lucked out in terms of talent, because there was so little work at that time,” said Reynolds.
Reynolds and five actors worked on the podcast remotely alongside a couple of Danish sound designers who had come across a fundraiser for the project and wanted to contribute their skills. The first season was recorded in 2021 and released in 2022.
Having received funding from the Canada Council of the Arts, the Dreamers team was then joined by new actors and another sound designer, and they created a second season which came out in early 2024.
“I feel so fortunate that … it had enough momentum to keep going, and that people still wanted to come back and continue telling the story,” said Reynolds.
UBC opera alum Ian Backstrom is the voice of Christopher — he’s Lily’s boyfriend in the beginning, but the second season brings his character to the forefront, focusing on his confusion surrounding his sexuality. When The Reverie starts creating fantasies for him involving non-female love interests, he’s thrown for a loop.
“The story arc of Chris's character in season two is kind of this self-discovery through subconscious and through the dream state,” said Backstrom.
“I don't think I've ever played a gay character before,” he said. “Because being gay is a central part of this character's exploration in this season, I think it's been pretty cool to draw from more personal experience to connect with the character.”
Backstrom noted that working on this season was much more individual than season one, where actors recorded scenes together — this time around, he recorded his parts alone, repeating each line with multiple different interpretations. As someone used to stage performance, not being able to play off of other actors and audience reactions in the moment required some getting used to.
Reynolds also comes from a theatre background, which influenced her decision to hold rehearsals — an unconventional practice for a podcast, but certainly an effective one.
“You're looking longingly at somebody, or you're feeling tension … How do you convey that, but just with your voice? The progress of [conveying] that from season one to season two was dramatic,” Reynolds said.
Dreamers is Reynolds’s first attempt at a large-scale work of fiction, and she noted that not everyone might enjoy it. But if there’s something that anyone can take away from the project, it’s that having ample funding, experience and resources might help in your creative endeavours, but are not essential to making art.
“I think when we started, all of us were amateurs … Because of our collective efforts, we were able to make a product,” said Reynolds.
“We all developed our skill sets enough that by the time we did season two, we were able to create something that I think sounds very professional and very well-polished, especially given that it's still a DIY project.”
Dreamers is available to stream on most listening platforms, including Spotify.