The Theatre of Soft Shadows

In the school theatre there was a purple curtain and a small lamp behind the stage.

Every Friday the children made shows with cardboard shapes: cats, trees, boats, moons. By day it was fun. In the evening, though, when the room was empty, the shadows on the walls looked larger.

Lia never wanted to be the last one to leave.

“The shadows are looking at me,” she said.

One evening she forgot her notebook under a chair. She returned with the teacher and saw on the wall a long shape with thin fingers.

“There it is.”

The teacher did not turn on all the lights at once. He took the tree shape and brought it near the lamp.

The large shadow moved.

“It is the tree,” he said.

Then he took the cat. The shadow became small and curved.

Then the boat. Then the Moon.

Lia looked more carefully. The shadows were not monsters. They were familiar things when the light stretched them.

The purple curtain rustled.

From the wall came a soft voice.

“We did not want to frighten you. We are drawings without colour.”

Lia came closer. She put her hand in front of the lamp. On the wall appeared a shadow with five fingers.

She moved it slowly. It looked like a caress.

“I can do it too.”

From that day Lia invented the theatre of soft shadows. Before turning off the light, she made a hand, a little bird, a boat appear on the wall. She gave names to the shapes.

When darkness arrived, it was no longer full of strangers.

It was a room where things slept in another form.