An item from something in the Sci-fi / fantasy line – details forgotten, I suspect that it was Philip Jose Farmer – but I love the line: “The Dream Master is as witless as a hedgehog – but he’s a superb artist”.
I had a dream that I was playing Cordelia in King Lear (which I did play in college), and the performance was that night.
In the dream I have no recollection of ever rehearsing with that group of actors.
Oh, and the costume didn’t fit, because I’m considerably fatter than when I was in college.
That’s hilarious.
And it could be worse; she could’ve been Professor Idi Amin.
This is one of my favorite thread titles ever! 
My stress dream has morphed from school to my favorite hobby - riding & showing horses. In my dream I’m not sure of which test or course I’m supposed to ride, which ring I’m supposed to be in or where the start box is, my horse isn’t braided or tacked up and I don’t have my show clothes, and my ride time is in 10 minutes. And in a sport where normally complete strangers are almost always willing to lend a hand, in my dream I can’t even get anyone to make eye contact, let alone answer a question or give me a hand.
I occasionally have dreams where I need to get somewhere fast and I can’t see, everything I look at goes to a dark grey blob.
When I’m really ever the edge about something I dream about driving a car and having to back up carefully and the brakes fail. I know the no-brakes dream isn’t unusual, but for some reason mine is always when I’m in reverse.
For the last fifteen years or so, most of my dreams have involved travelling to a new place, or exploring a new place, usually illicitly (sneaking around). They’re always different in specifics, but thematically that’s the consistent factor.
The other day one involved a group of my friends (travelling around Tokyo), one of whom insisted on a nickname that nobody else wanted to call him. He wanted to be known by his initials, D P. As he said, “D, no period, P, no period.” So everyone called him “Deano.Peeno.”
It was a very odd dream.
Wild, and probably way-off-the-mark, guess: have you by any chance read – or been talked to about, by fans – the “cozy” detective novel series by Alexander McCall Smith: set in Botswana; and the sleuth in which, is a personable youngish lady who is a citizen and resident of that country? (I myself can’t stand the books; but there are many people, whose taste I respect, who love them.)
I quite frequently dream (cf GB’s just above, and WF Tomba’s Handel oratorio dream) that I’m supposed to be acting in a play – with the first performance imminent – and I haven’t even begun to learn my lines. The “unprepared for the assignment” thing, seems to be an often-experienced dream scenario.
I often have a weird variant of the “back in school” dream.
One of the very coolest things I’ve ever done, in a life notably absent of cool, was to spend a month at the National Outdoor Leadership School, taking one of their Wind River Wilderness courses. NOLS is a bit like Outward Bound, but more technically-oriented; it’s less about self-discovery and more about how to enjoy the wilderness without a: killing yourself, or b: leaving a huge mess. (Minimum impact/pack-it-in-pack-it-out is almost a religion to them; one of the very first things you learn on a NOLS course is that a smooth stone or a handful of snow makes an effective substitute for toilet paper.)
I spent a month camping in the Wyoming Rockies, and it was one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had. I frequently dream that I am back in Lander, or in the Wind Rivers, and about to take a second course. Usually, I don’t have the proper equipment, but it’s still an delight to be back. I wake up from those dreams disappointed.
Related ideas are a feature of “Inkheart”. “Never Ending Story”, “once apon a time”, “go between”., “black moon draw”: it’s a kind-of-common idea. So it’s entirely possible, that you, like others, thought it up entirely by yourself 