The Diva and the Writer

The show-within-a-show has always been a generative plot device. The audience gets to witness the mounting of the performance that we ourselves are watching. What is the magic and trickery done unto us? How is the wool pulled over our eyes to make the scene before us take on the appearance of realness? A truly good show-within-a-show keeps us playing with these nesting dolls, reverberating between reality and unreality, and, in the process, encourages us to look outside the show we think we’re watching toward the conditions of its making.