Life in the Dressing Room of the Theatre

She came instead to see Annie Cane, a magician who dressed in trousers and top hat and produced the wishes and thoughts of her audience seemingly right out of the air […] A hush would fall like a curtain mid-act before Annie walked out on stage. A quiet quite unlike any other, where the air, unchanged from just moments before, would seem heavier, thicker and more taut, as though if Lettie were to breathe out too quickly, the air would snap and shatter and the spell would be broken. Annie, all grease paint and swagger, hair slicked back with quince seed oil and cut short like a boy, would bow and grin and take charge all at once. But her prettiness defied her, there was a deliberate femininity to her gait, and a glitter behind her eyes that was, undoubtedly, the gleam of a woman with a secret…
Elinora Westfall

Every night, a woman takes a train from her home in the country to sit under the dimmed chandeliers in a music hall in London to watch a charismatic magician perform the seemingly impossible… All aboard! for our latest Podcast, “Life in the Dressing Room of the Theatre”, an atmospheric tale of magic and mystery, by Elinora Westfall.

You can listen to the podcast on the player below, or subscribe to “Litro Lab” on Spotify or iTunes.

Podcast: Embed

Subscribe to Litro Lab via itunes RSS | More

Did you like this podcast? Listen to “Do You Take This Woman?” by Z.G. Watkins, next.

To subscribe to our membership packs, which includes all print issues delivered to your door, full online access to all short fiction, old issues and archives: click here.

About the author: Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Westfall is an Australian/British lesbian actress and writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio from the UK. Her novel, Everland has been selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow 2021 Editorial Programme, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theatre shows have been performed in London’s West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue. Elinora is also working on The Art of Almost, a lesbian comedy-drama radio series as well as writing a television drama series and the sequel to her novel, Everland.