letting your characters inside your head

I went last night to see my friend Laurel Olstein's new play, Esther's Mustache. It's a charming production featuring four very talented actors. One of the most interesting things from a writing perspective was the physical representation of how we let character's inside our heads. The main player in the show is Maddie, a cartoonist. Her strip. "Oh My Goddess" is a hit -- and the goddess "lives" on stage within the frame of Maddie's apartment window. Throughout the entire play, this blond bombshell is there mimicking Maddie's thoughts, contradicting them, and arguing for and against various things she'd like to see happen both in the strip and in Maddie's life.  None of the other players can see her or hear her, of course, since she actually lives inside Maddie's head.

Laurel is an immensely talented writer, and I thought this whole conceit with the goddess character was brilliant. It was so funny and so true: the characters we create really CAN become bullies and really CAN influence our real lives, if only we let them come wholly to life.