Stage Review - Mimesophobia
Presented By: inD Theatre - Bainbridge Island, WA
Show Run: November 06 - November 22, 2026
Date Reviewed: Saturday, November 07, 2026 (Opening Weekend)
Run Time: 2 Hours (including a 15-minute intermission)
Reviewed by: Greg Heilman
Have you either been caught in a gaper delay or helped cause one, slowing down to peer over a median or around an emergency vehicle to see what all those flashing lights are about? Maybe you’ve watched a true crime documentary or an episode of Dateline and gone straight to the internet afterward to see what the show got right, what it dramatized, and what happened to the people whose lives it turned into a story. Admittedly, I’ve done both, and I’ve often stepped back to wonder what, exactly, it is I’m looking for. What do I expect to learn from a glimpse of the wreckage? Why do I feel differently about a scene I’ve just watched dramatized when I learn the very real details?
Those questions run through Carlos Murillo’s Mimesophobia or Before and After, directed by Alix Black for inD Theatre and running through November 22 on the Side Quest Stage at Rolling Bay Hall on Bainbridge Island. From what I can gather, “mimesophobia” isn’t a real condition, rather it seems to have been coined for the play. Nobody could be blamed for thinking at first glance that the play deals with the fear of mimes, but alas, it’s got nothing to do with that at all. Rather, the play defines mimesophobia (pronounced mimmisophobia) as “the morbid fear of slavish imitation,” and I like how specific that is. There’s something startling about hearing “morbid” and “slavish” in the same breath, “morbid” invoking the impulse to look at the wreckage, while “slavish” causing a wonder about how far someone might go to reproduce what actually happened in a dramatic fashion.
The play follows two screenwriters at a writers’ retreat who are struggling to turn a murder-suicide into a film. Then they meet Shawn, who may have been involved in the very story they’re trying to tell. The closer the writers get to someone who might know what happened, the better their prospects for a screenplay. There’s a practical question here that ties into the overarching premise of the piece (how to recreate a real event for the screen), but the question I find more troubling is what the writers are willing to do to make an already tragic event appear even more shocking. They know there’s an audience for it. The uncomfortable part is how easy it is to imagine being in that audience.
Casey Cline and Kyle Addy, as screenwriters Aaron Miller and Henry Blumenthal, frame the story and give the audience a lens through which to see it, both puns intended. The two are solid in providing the play with a framework, giving it somewhere to return as the narration and reenactments complicate the account they’re trying to put on paper. When they finally find their hook, Kyle sends Henry into what feels like a cocaine-fueled rant, they are at a writer’s retreat after all. There’s a sleepless quality to the rush of words, and what makes it so unsettling is how recognizable the excitement is. He’s a writer who’s finally figured out what to do with his material. It just happens that his material is somebody else’s tragedy.
While Casey and Kyle provide the play’s foundational context, it’s Miah Thoreau Campbell and Helene Minassian who do the most to bring the play’s ideas about watching and retelling to the surface. Helene’s opening delivery sounds as though she’s introducing an episode of The Twilight Zone, and she and Miah sustain that eeriness with the composure of people who already know where the story is going. By intermission, the audience is left wondering where the whole thing is headed, though the threads on the proverbial evidence board are starting to bring something into a bit of focus. As the connections emerge, the effect is closer to watching a true crime drama, where an incidental detail can suddenly become the thing that ties two events together. Helene also plays Beth, Shawn’s mother, and the New York accent helps her make a clean turn from the measured delivery of the narrator to the voice of someone whose family is part of the story being told.
Ariel Doyle makes author and academic protégé Shawn unsettling even when the attention is ostensibly on something she’s written. As the subject of the book Shawn has come to the retreat herself to write is described, Ariel’s movement draws the eye, and the nearly monotone delivery she uses elsewhere gives the impression of someone almost possessed. There’s enough going on in her performance to suggest how troubled Shawn is while leaving the extent of her involvement open. Kylie Cordero, meanwhile, is more or less on her own in the scenes that reconstruct her character’s dead sister’s diary. Her face is particularly expressive, and there’s an emotional directness to the reading that makes the fragments feel personal. Each fragment adds detail, but hearing those words in her voice also keeps the audience guessing as to what might be missing from the reconstruction and how much anyone can know about the person who wrote them.
As the play’s director, one of Alix’s most striking bits of staging comes as the writers read from their screenplay. Four performers act out the scene in sync, two facing front and two facing back. The precision makes the imitation itself fascinating to watch, both providing the audience with the ability to follow what’s happening in the scene and still having their collective attention pulled toward the mechanics of how it’s being reproduced. It’s a moment when the production makes the viewers aware of the work of reenactment even as it draws the eye deeper into it.
Set Designer Betsy Hagestedt makes good use of the small stage by building up. A square black table and chairs and a narrow cot sit on patterned rugs below, while two small televisions and a cluster of lamps occupy one end of the raised platform, with a larger screen at the other. The rumpled bedding and warm lamps give the room a familiar look, even as the red drapes and exposed metal truss make it feel like a space set up for someone to watch, while Eli Backer’s lighting makes the shifts between narration and reenactment easy to follow. There’s a stark look to the narration, while reds, greens, and blues come into play when events are recreated. The color changes help distinguish the account of what happened from the version put in front of the audience.
From a personal perspective, what resonates with me about this production is the connection between Henry’s excitement at finding his hook and my own impulse to open another tab on my browser after finishing an episode of Dateline. He wants one more detail that will make the story work. I want one more detail that will tell me how close the story came to what really happened. Mimesophobia gets its unease from how readily those two desires can feed each other. The more shocking the story, the more likely we go looking for the wreckage.
In inD Theatre’s Mimesophobia or Before and After, two screenwriters looking for a way to turn a murder-suicide into a film find that the closer they get to the people involved, the more compelling their story becomes. Director Alix Black draws the audience into that same fascination through eerie narration and an intimacy in its storytelling. It’s a good mystery that gets more uncomfortable the longer it holds the audience’s attention, especially when the details that make for a better screenplay are the ones someone else has to live with.
Mimesophobia, from inD Theatre, runs on stage at the Sidequest Stage at Rolling Bay Hall on Bainbridge Island through November 22. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.indtheatre.org/.
Photo credit: Abby Wyatt Images
