I've had multiple dreams involving movie theaters. They range from random and weird to strange and deeply disturbing. The latest one happened last night and involved myself walking into a packed theater before the show had started. For a while I ran up and down the aisles flailing my arms around and yelling and dancing and generally acting crazy. Many in the audience seemed amused with what I was doing and some even applauded. After doing this for a while I looked around for a long time for somewhere to sit, but couldn't find anyone I knew or a spot that was empty. After this I walked out into the lobby and Sofia Coppola was there and she told me I had nice hair.

I have my own ideas as to what this means but would love to hear someone else's opinion, to this dream specifically and to the appearance of movie theaters in general. Thanks! - DG

In your dreams about movie theaters, do you ever get to watch the movie that is playing? Are you ever in the movie?

Since you dream about movie theaters a lot, this could mean that you often think about how other people see you or about the roles that you play in life, or the roles that you want to play or that other people want you to play.

Marcia- Thanks for responding. Yes, sometimes I do see the movie playing in the theater, but every time this happens it feels like things get confusing and almost like I drop a level deeper into the dream if that makes any sense. A one point in my life I used to experiment with psychedelics and I remember that once the movie that played in the dream seemed to pertain to this period quite a lot but in ways I couldn't fully comprehend. I think you're probably right about the roles theory but I'm wondering if there's something else going on, like something archetypal, because theaters have been a part of human history for so long and seem like such a potent symbol, being associated with perception and seeing and narrative and what not. Its almost like the theater is a symbol for the dream itself. Hopefully someone who knows a lot about philosophy or theater will read this and let me know. Anyways thanks for your insight, it definitely got me thinking.

I wasn't sure if the dream was just about the theater (the building) or the movie itself. It is true that the movie takes the dream to a deeper level. In a way, dreams and movies are alike - they both involve suspension of disbelief - forgetting the "real" waking world and accepting the fantastic dream world or the world of the movie.

So the movie in the dream could be your mind's way of examining the difference between dreaming and waking thoughts - kind of like a rudimentary form of lucid dreaming.The use of pyschedelics could relate to this, because thinking about their use involves thinking about another type of altered state of consciousness.

I wonder if you start to get confused when you see the movie because it is a level that your mind isn't ready for you to see. The movie could be about you and it could be something that you aren't capable of facing yet. Or it could just be to hard for your mind to look at yourself on these multiple levels.