Reflections from a bathroom Mirror by Destiny Barrett

‘Reflections from a Bathroom Mirror’ is haunting meditation on life, death, and lullabies.

Inspiration

I was inspired by the way people are strangely the most authentic in a bathroom. It is a private place where the bathroom mirror really gets to see every angle of a person. I used this lens to craft an expressionist story of various peoples lives as situations play out in a bathroom.

I also used the mirror to inspire the idea of parallel stories reflecting one another. Two women share the stage as one goes through a miscarriage and the other has a live water birth. The men share the stage, one young and full of life and the other aged and dying. A woman takes center stage reading lines that start as a wedding vow rehearsal and turn into a eulogy rehearsal for her husband. Life and Death also become personified and water is an ensemble that follows their bidding.

Process

The entire story started with a poem in a class at Augusta University. Doug Joiner, the professor for writing for the stage influenced me to turn that poem into dialogue with elevated language. A few drafts later and Reflections from a Bathroom Mirror really started to blossom into the show that it became. After casting and getting started with rehearsal, I got to watch my show come to life. The entire process was collaborative and very workshop based. I got to hear the way a scene was going and revise the script and hand it back.

One of my visions for this show was for the woman named “Mother” to oversee the whole show from a higher place and a large skirt that overtook the whole stage. Several hundred yards of silk and a bathtub later, the set was born.

The actors breathed the last breath into the show that really brought it to life. I got to talk one on one with all the actors to develop their characters and see what they wanted to show and what they got from the writing. This show is meant to make the audience question how they are living their lives and I got to see my actors do the same thing and create their performances.