Design by Lora
Stage Directions
A late afternoon
The sunset glowing through the windows of the house, magical
A child stands in the living room, whimsical
Imagination running rampant
The spotlight turns on
There is no audience
She begins her performance
Act I : Origin
She does not know she is performing.
The living room is small and the floor is lava, so she makes the coffee table her stage. She screams her favorite songs, pitch too high, lyrics wrong, and her laughter belongs.
There is no script, no audience.
She performs without practice, moves wherever her body flows, becomes whoever she wants to be, an astronaut, a teacher, a singer
The opportunities are endless, the dreams tremendous
She spins.
She pirouettes.
She bows dramatically to the audience, an empty room.
The applause isn’t real, but it doesnt matter.
She hears it anyway, with the brightest grin possible, warmer than the sunlight streaming through the window.
Interval: The audience arrive
It happens unexpectedly, quietly
A voice from the entrance,
“Dont be so loud”
A teacher in class,
“Sit properly and behave yourself”
In a loud home,
“Only an A+ is considered good, look at your classmates”
One by one, the audience starts settling into the seats
A teacher in the front row,
A parent in the centre,
Strangers in the dark, with watchful eyes and unrequited advice,
She doesn’t notice nor remember the exact moment when things change
But there’s a shift in the stage
Expectations fill the air like the oxygen we exchange
The room feels smaller now
She reassures herself, unaware of the impending change, the phantom strings already entwining within her.
Act II: Rehearsed
She starts learning her lines carefully, repeatedly rehearsing backstage.
The lights start feeling too bright, too white
“I’m fine”
“Everything’s going to be okay”
“I know what I’m doing”
She starts overthinking, but alas
She performs perfectly.
Perhaps too perfectly.
There’s a flow to it, the way she says the right thing, performs at the right time, with the right tone and intonation. Nodding before she even realises it. Silencing herself to keep the peace, better than saying something wrong, she believes.
She corrects herself mid sentence, rehearses lines with scenarios in her head, replays them instantly after, and plagues her mind with the ‘should have’ and ‘could have’.
Pause
Adjust posture.
Now proceed.
The applause has changed form.
Now it comes in the form of grades, validation, in being told she’s “a well-behaved girl”, in having friends, in “are you going to become a doctor or engineer?”
She becomes conditioned to chase it.
Backstage, she forgets her lines, losing her acuity
Her facial expressions dropping its genuity
She forgets which lines were written by her, and which by society
The spotlight turns on.
She performs confidence
She performs being okay
She performs as someone else.
The audience can’t tell the difference.
And soon neither can she.
Act III: Breaking character
Performance after performance,
A strange feeling starts creeping in.
Her lines start sounding weird, muddled, the constant rehearsing weighing her down. She feels numb, erased, anxiety courses through her, that unknown feeling of something wrong happening,
Now, as the spotlight turns on, instead of confidence, dread fills her.
She hesitates. Her mind lapses.
No lines.
No expressions.
A piercing silence follows
And in that silence, it hits her
Who is she without this performance?
Climax: Change
It starts as a small kindling flame within her.
Rage. Why must these people demand her to change herself just to fit into their perfect mold? Why must she perform just to please them? Why must she dim her fire to be palatable for them?
Sadness. What happened to the little girl singing unabashedly on her made-up coffee-table stage, performing for herself, being loud, whimsical, no expectations, no pressure?
Courage. Is she going to live the rest of her life performing as someone else? Or is she going to be brave enough to make a change, to stop caring what others think and just be?
She makes a decision.
Finale: Born Again
The lights dim
The audience leaves, or maybe she just stops looking.
The voices grow shut out,
The watchful eyes die out,
The expectations black out,
She pauses for a moment, still, unsure, unpracticed.
There are no lines, no one to impress
Just empty quiet space.
It feels familiar but new simultaneously.
She takes a step forward, and begins
Not perfectly,
Not confidently,
Not for anyone to watch,
She moves before she thinks, no rehearsals
She speaks from her heart, makes mistakes,
Exists without asking if she is doing it right
It feels different,
Liberating,
The light softens, her shadow descends
She bows dramatically,
Just like she did when she was younger,
There’s no applause,
But, it doesnt matter anymore
She begins again.
Because in the end,
She allowed herself to shine without the desire to be seen.
And that’s the real applause.