I: THE McCALLS
ANGEL O (s/he, her/him)
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At birth, Beyond the Mirror's protagonist, Angel O—that's me—was pronounced to be a boy. The doctor responsible for this decision knew nothing of intersex, hermaphroditism, or human chimerism. I was christened Angelo Washington Williams.
Growing up I always knew that I wasn't like other boys, but it wasn't until puberty hit that the full truth of the situation was revealed: I was both a boy and a girl, both male and female . . . a true hermaphrodite. Biologically, I'm twins who joined together just a few days after conception: a 46,XX/46,XY chimera. Following this revelation I began allowing my female self—Angel—to be expressed more and more. A few years later I received a mysterious message urging me to become a doctor, and I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to attend medical school. As Dr Angelo Williams, a neurosurgeon based in Jersey City, I'm a competent and successful but shy man: left-brain dominant, smart, logical, rational. After a few decades working in the medical field, Angelo relinquished the reins to Angel and I revived my childhood passion of musical theatre: I became a cabaret performer. As Angel, the star of the The Garden Cabaret in the East VIllage, I'm a vivacious and confident woman: right-brain dominant, spontaneous, bubbly, creative. Angel O—the name that I've progressively adopted as my female and male selves have become more fully integrated—is great friends with Bernard and Adam McCall, and Lola and William Chu; we all lived in the same Lower East Side apartment building for many years. Amir Nazzim is my lover. The year I turned 40 another force entered my life: the force of spiritual awakening. This energy has progressively become the most important aspect of my life, and my greatest desire in life now is to share the possibility of peace and freedom with anyone who's ready to hear it, hence me telling my story and creating the musical. |
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After the initial awakening of the soul, attention naturally turns away from the outside world, away from the accumulation of more things and more experiences, to looking inside oneself for true, lasting happiness and fulfilment.
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BERNARD McCALL (he/him)
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Bernard McCall was a brilliant scientist in the field of artificial intelligence, now retired. He was responsible for the development of the ground breaking, but subsequently disastrous, Augmented Intelligence Plus (AI+ ©) technology in collaboration with Ken Abercrombie and Abercrombie Industries back in the late 1990s.
Bernard is a bookworm: intellectual, withdrawn, and socially awkward. He's not unfriendly, however, Bernard simply prefers to be alone with a book and his own company than with other people. Bernard now owns and runs a small second-hand bookstore on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Bernard's Bookstore is the gathering place and local hangout for the extended McCall chamily (= chosen family), which includes left-leaning thinkers, many of whom are interested in upending the right-wing establishment, and a number of whom—like Bernard, Mrs. Chu, Amir, and myself—are also interested in spiritual awakening. |
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"Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens."
— Carl Jung |
MRS. CHU (she/her)
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Mrs. Lola Chu is Bernard's upstairs neighbour, his landlord, and his best friend. Mrs. Chu owns and runs a successful cleaning business which has franchises in all five boroughs of New Eden, as well as Jersey Shores and Atlantic City.
Lola Chu is a tough, no-nonsense, second generation Chinese American woman who's deeply interested in all things political. As an enthusiastic activist she's always lobbying for some important issue or another. Her chief passion, however, is saving the planet—and the human race—from destruction through global warming. Lola ran for Congress in 2006 as an independent but a public scandal resulted in a humiliating defeat which deflated Mrs. Chu's passion for politics for a number of years. In 2014 Lola was asked by the Egalitarian Party to run for Congress on their ticket and she won in a landslide. Since then she's made her voice heard loud and clear on Capitol Hill. Mrs. Chu is keenly interested in all things metaphysical, having been introduced to the teachings of renowned spiritual teacher, Evelyn Bourne, at the same time as Bernard and myself back in 2006. |
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The process of looking inside ourselves and examining our moment-to-moment inner experience in order to discover our true nature is called self-inquiry. It is one path to liberation.
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ADAM McCALL (he/him)
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Adam McCall is Bernard's son. He's unaware of his mother's true identity, mistakenly believing that she died in childbirth.
Adam is strong, muscular, and handsome; he spends a lot of time at the gym. Adam thinks he's charming, but in truth he's more goofy than charming. Adam is currently working as a back-up dancer alongside me at The Garden Cabaret. He'd like to think that he's motivated by idealistic goals of making the world a better, more ethical, and safer place—his hero is Captain America—but in reality Adam is a little too lazy and self-absorbed to actually achieve anything useful in life, and he's frequently paralysed by fear and doubt whenever he has to make a decision about anything. Adam is addicted to bodybuilding, adrenaline rushes, pornography, sex, and his own reflection. He's also an avid nudist. |
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"This indeed is our final destiny as a species—to realise our state of oneness and unity with all that is."
— Richard Rudd, from The Gene Keys |
WILLIAM CHU (he/him)
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William Chu is Mrs. Chu's only child. He's a restless soul who is often away from home traveling around the country, and around the globe, seeking fun and adventure.
William is eternally optimistic and is a natural entertainer; he's a part-time stand-up comedian. His other passions are snowboarding, abseiling, surfing, and all extreme sports. At present William is doing his stand-up comedy routine at TGC until he's able to travel to Australia where he plans to work with a shark cage diving company. William is a cheeky young Asian man in his early 20s. He is of medium height and slim build, and has long, jet-black hair that he generally wears pulled back in a ponytail. William and Adam grew up together from the time they were young boys. They were inseparable as children and got into all sort of trouble together; they're still the best of friends. |
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Once we can see clearly how we're perpetuating our own suffering, and once we consciously choose to stop the forward momentum of our mind for just a moment—for 1/12th of a second, Papaji would say—then our true nature as consciousness is revealed, and we awaken, spiritually speaking.
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AMIR NAZZIM (they/them)
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Amir Nazzim is a graduate student of Political Science at NEU. He was born in Paris of Syrian parents—academic professors of architecture (mother) and philosophy (father)—who had relocated from their home country in search of a better life.
Amir is intelligent, helpful, and kind. He is also prone to debilitating anxiety, and he has a bad habit of second-guessing himself on most major life decisions. Amir's passions are politics and poetry, and he's also a practising Sufi. Amir is part-time manager of Bernard's Bookstore, and for some years lived in the small studio at the rear of the store, behind the stacks of books. Amir is great friends with Bernard, Adam, William, and particularly Mrs. Chu—he loves her clear, firm political opinions. As a result of his association with the extended McCall clan, Amir is now also deeply interested in spiritual awakening. Amir and I met at a Satsang retreat, and we've been lovers ever since. |
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II: THE ABERCROMBIES
LOBIDA (she/her)
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Zoe Parker, Beyond the Mirror's principal antagonist, loudly rejected her stiflingly rich family and their privileged lifestyle from the youngest age. As soon as she was able, Zoe left her family and moved to New Eden City to start a career as an actress.
After an embarrassing public scandal erupted in New Eden, Zoe relocated to Los Angeles. Here she became a celebrated film actress with a meteoric career during the '00s, culminating in a Best Actress Oscar for a much-lauded role portraying Benazir Bhutto. After receiving her Academy Award, Zoe dramatically quit the movie business and moved back to New Eden, changed her name to Lobida, and began pursuing her other life's calling as a dominatrix. Later the same year Lobida met entrepreneur and aspiring politician, Ken Abercrombie, and soon afterwards he made her his exclusive mistress. Ken gave Lobida the title and deed to premises where she could combine her two life passions: performing and BDSM, and The Dark Side opened on the Upper East Side of New Eden in 2009, and is hugely successful; repressed sin and debauchery clearly rife in this prosperous neighbourhood. Genetically Zoe/Lobida is pure Mayflower, but deep in her soul she's pure Latino. Lobida is strong-willed, loud, larger than life, and she has commanding presence. She also has an insatiable appetite for life's sensual pleasures, and a palpable dark side. |
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The shadow is that part of our unconscious mind that holds our darkest secrets as well as our most traumatic and shameful memories. If it remains unexamined it will continue to sabotage our lives, and cause suffering to ourselves and others.
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KEN ABERCROMBIE (he/him)
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Ken Abercrombie is the CEO of Abercrombie Industries, AI—the world's leading artificial intelligence, robotics, and nanotechnology company. He's extremely successful, and exceedingly wealthy.
Ken is tall, athletic, boyishly handsome, and extraordinarily charismatic. He was elected to Congress in 2014, and is currently serving his second term as a member—and now the majority leader—of the House of Representatives. Ken has just been awarded the Partisan Party nomination for the 2020 US presidential elections. It's July and Ken is ahead in the polls. Ken Abercrombie is also a man with many secrets: producer of massive amounts of greenhouse gases, dodgy and unethical business and tax practices, a penchant for being dominated and disciplined by older women, etc. His many enemies would dearly love to find substantive evidence with which they could take the golden boy down. Public exposure of his many secrets could spell the end of Ken's political aspirations if the full truth were to ever leak out. |
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FAYE ABERCROMBIE (she/her)
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Faye Abercrombie is Ken's wife and the powerhouse behind his successful business and political careers. She is extremely capable, hard working, helpful, and sincerely kind. Faye is also a Yale law graduate. If she had a secret superpower it would be the ability to spin gold from straw.
Faye is shorter than the average American woman, but she's classically pretty, and extremely chic and stylish: Chanel suits, twin-sets, sensible court shoes, pearls, etc. She's also the devoted mother of twins, Alex and Eve, who are now in their early 20s. Faye regularly hosts charity fundraisers, and, as possible future First Lady, she's just started her own charity—Let's All Get Along (LAGA)—aimed at achieving universal world peace through promoting eye gazing, hugging, and laughing with others. The Abercrombie residence is one of the twin penthouses of a distinctive art deco building on Central Park West, where Faye runs the household like an expensive Swiss watch: precise, efficient, reliable, polished. |
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Arrogance and self-loathing are the polarised—inflated and deflated—lenses the world is seen through when the ego is the centre of the identity. Humility, innocence, kindness, and loving compassion is the undivided lens the world is seen through when consciousness is the centre.
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EVE ABERCROMBIE (she/her)
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Eve Abercrombie is currently living at home with her parents, Ken and Faye, following a suicide attempt two years ago. Eve is melancholy and lost. She's addicted to social media, online shopping, and . . . pain. One of the triggers for Eve's suicide attempt was being suddenly and unceremoniously dumped by her college boyfriend of three years, who announced out of the blue that he was to marry his childhood sweetheart.
Eve recently started working as a hostess at The Dark Side (TDS) — the BDSM cabaret owned and run by her father's mistress, Lobida. Eve's former nanny and best friend, Yantra, is now the manager of TDS. Eve is a singer/dancer/actress—she would love to perform on Broadway—but she's shy, lacks confidence, and doesn't believe that she has any talent. Yantra is encouraging Eve to start performing at TDS to try and boost her self-esteem. Ken is supportive of the plan, but Faye—who is endlessly bitter about Ken's ongoing relationship with Lobida—is vehemently opposed to it. |
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“We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
— William Shakespeare, from The Tempest. |
YANTRA SRINIVASAN (she/her)
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Yantra Srinavasan was born in New Jersey in the late '60s. She narrowly escaped being killed in a car accident on her 21st birthday whilst deeply inebriated. Thanks to her neurosurgeon, Dr Angelo Williams—and to AA—she's been sober ever since.
Yantra was employed by the Abercrombie's as Eve and Alex's live-in nanny from their birth until they were in their early teens. She is Eve's best friend in the world, and her confidante. Yantra is warm and nurturing, a natural mother. She's also naturally funny, can be both extremely lazy and stubborn, and she has a deeply hidden temper which lashes out at others if provoked sufficiently. Yantra is now the chief hostess and manager of TDS. She's also Lobida's secret BDSM play partner, where Lobida—in a total reversal of her usual dominating role—gives herself up to be dominated by Yantra. Yantra would dearly love this relationship to progress to something more permanent, but Lobida has her attention pulled towards more power through her role as Ken Abercrombie's mistress. Yantra is a curvy, sexy, Rubenesque woman; her father was South Asian, her mother German. |
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When all thought of past is relinquished, and no thought of future is roused, then one is just here, undefined. The experience is of being a droplet of consciousness in an infinite expanse of consciousness; a droplet of love in an ocean of love. I call it being Beyond the Mirror.
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ALEX ABERCROMBIE (he/him)
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Alex Abercrombie is Eve's twin brother. He bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Eve: slim, athletic, mousey blond hair, average height, cute face, glasses. Unlike his sister, however, Alex is outgoing, friendly, and confident. He's also very hardworking and extremely ambitious like his father.
Alex is gay, and is currently working alongside myself and Adam McCall as a backup dancer at The Garden Cabaret while he finishes his medical degree at NEU. His relationship with his father is currently non-existent as Ken had wanted Alex to publicly deny his homosexuality in order to keep the family image untarnished for the upcoming presidential elections. Alex was outraged and appalled, and leaked the story to the left-wing Egalitarian Party-supporting press, which caused a minor scandal. Alex now lives in a small apartment near the corner of Bleecker Street and Broadway, NOHO, and he has become an integral member of the extended McCall chamily. |
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"When you know who the characters are and what they want, when you root hard for them all night, you are set up to have the greatest creators reach right past your intellectual faculties at the last minute and press down hard on that joy buzzer that lurks in the back part of your brain. When they do, your spirit levitates, just like Peter Pan heading out the window to Neverland."
— Jack Viertel, from The Secret Life of the American Musical. |
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