Costume Changes: A Sequence

ACT I: [Enter stage left wearing mother's face] I borrow her frown lines, the way she holds her mouth when she's trying not to cry. I've practiced this expression in bathroom mirrors since I was twelve. The costume fits perfectly— too perfectly. I've worn it so long I've forgotten it's not mine. ACT II: [Exit through mirror wearing nobody's name] In the space between scenes, I shed every borrowed gesture, every inherited mannerism, every expectation that was placed on me like a coat I never asked for. Naked of names, I am just breath and possibility. The audience doesn't know I'm improvising. They think this is the show. INTERMISSION: [The audience doesn't know I'm improvising] Behind the curtain, I count to ten in languages I don't speak, trying to remember which version of myself I'm supposed to be in the next scene. The prompter whispers: Just be yourself. But which self? The one I was born as or the one I've been becoming? ACT III: [Rapid costume changes in the wings] Daughter. Lover. Stranger. Friend. Enemy. Ghost. Thirty seconds between each transformation. No time to breathe, no time to think, just muscle memory and the knowledge that the show must go on. I am all of these people and none of them. I am the space between costumes, the moment of transition, the quick change artist who's forgotten what they looked like before the first curtain rose. FINALE: [Standing center stage in street clothes] When the performance ends, I walk out in jeans and a t-shirt, no makeup, no costume, no character to hide behind. The audience shifts uncomfortably. This isn't what they paid to see. But this— this ordinary, this unadorned, this simply human— this is the bravest performance I've ever given.