Theatre of Mirrors

An imaginative composed by Makayla (Year 12 Advanced)

The rain lashes down, not in drops but in whips, thin cords snapping against her skin. Mascara streaks her cheeks, ink running to meet the wind. Mia’s hair, unbound, coils and strikes like a live thing in the storm’s grip. Beneath her boots the ground trembles an aftershock, as though the earth too is weary beneath unseen weight. She doesn’t know what pulls her into the alley. Desperation, perhaps, or something stranger a current beneath the skin that leads her past sodden walls where flickering light hums like breath. The storm seems to dissolve behind her. In its place, a muffled, humming stillness.

She follows the uneven path as if a hand unseen has taken her own.

A door looms ahead, heavy, carved, strange. The old theatre. She remembers it now. Once grand, now left to crumble. Posters hang in tatters ‘The Tempest One Night Only’. A faded image of Prospero half torn away. Mia remembers seeing it once with her mother, years ago. The man of the storm, swallowed by his own magic. The memory tugs at her. She hesitates, then pushes the door open.

The theatre feels strangely familiar, as if it has always been waiting. As she steps further in, the silence presses in on her. It’s a stillness, not born of emptiness, but of expectation. She can almost hear the ghosts of past performances lingering in the air, echoes of voices, the rustle of costumes, the faintest trace of a forgotten line. The stage before her feels empty, but it’s not there are actors waiting for their time to be called to perform. The shadows stretch long, and she is aware of something unseen, something behind the curtains, watching her. The rows of seats, once a space for an audience, now seem to focus only on her. She can almost feel the weight of their gaze, not the way a crowd might look at an actor, but like a mirror, demanding to be seen. Here, there is no escape. The stage is not just a space it is a reflection, and she has a feeling it will show her what she has long avoided.

Inside the velvet shadows and gilded cornices. The air smells of dust and something older still. The box office is empty. But from beyond the double doors, music hums, a rehearsal, perhaps. Lights glow faintly through the crack. She moves forward. The theatre breathes around her. Rows of empty seats. A stage ahead, lit now by visible footlights. No mysticism, just light, wood, actors still preparing. A tech operator gestures to the sound booth. A director’s voice calls: “Places, please.” She lowers herself into the front row. The velvet beneath her fingers is worn thin.

The lights dim.

Curtains part.

The actors on the stage are in modern dress Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Caliban. The words unfold in practiced rhythm. Yet something catches her, draws her in not the illusion of magic but the rawness beneath the lines. Grief. Anger. Hunger. Hope. In the actor’s faces Mia sees her own longings reflected back.

She is no actor, she reminds herself. Just an audience member seeking shelter from the rain. And yet the performance speaks to her directly. Each line a thin blade peeling back her own defences.

Prospero’s voice cuts through “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”

She grips the seat’s armrest, heart racing. A script might as well be placed in her lap one she’s never written but knows by heart. The unspoken words linger as a reminder “The need to be seen. To speak. To be free.” 

The director halts the scene “Reset!” but the moment lingers.

Compelled, breathless, she rises. She walks down the aisle, aware of the crew glancing her way. She pauses at the edge of the stage. The director looks up “Do you need something?”

Her voice trembles but finds shape: “I... just needed to watch. Please.”

The director nods once. “Stay if you like. We’re only running lines.”

She sits again, this time leaning forward. No longer hiding. Scene after scene unfolds. Prospero’s final relinquishing of control mirrors her own unspoken longing to shed old wounds.

As the actors speak, an unease stirs in Mia not from the words  themselves, but from the silence between them. An awareness, faint yet constant, that unseen eyes might be watching. She glances up. No cameras. No glass eye in the wall. But still a trace of something. A conditioned reflex. Years of being taught that even thought is not free.

The line coils around her. Freedom. The most fragile thing. A thing so easily renamed, reshaped, erased.

When the final line is spoken “Now my charms are all o’erthrown…” the stage falls still. No applause. No crowd. Only her quiet understanding that she, too, has faced something here. Not in illusion, but in witnessing, in allowing herself to feel what she’s long avoided. She lingers after the others file out. The empty seats are no longer daunting. Only rows of stories, waiting. Mia steps into the rain-washed night. The air hums quietly. The world is the same. Yet something beneath her skin has shifted.

Days pass, She carries the change lightly with an unfamiliar ease. Words feel sharper now. Conversations flicker with double edges. Her sight seems thinner, more constructed. Memory feels suspect, was it always this way? And some truths must be guarded quietly. No proclamation. No defiance. Only the surety that somewhere within, the words are still her own.