Hello! I am currently writing a story about a 20-something girl who lands a job as a director for an off-broadway play. It's in it's very early stages (to the point that I'm still trying to figure out the main characters name), but I know that I'd like her to find some sort of mysterious object within the theatre she is working at. I love mysteries that have been hidden away for decades, only to be discovered by a curious mind. The main question being -- what should the object be, and what mystery does it hold? The first thing I thought of was a journal or diary that hides some sort of secret. What are your thoughts? ps. I am aiming towards a target audience of tweens and young adults. (think Nancy Drew audience, if not a tad older.)
Demonically possessed stage props? Maybe something that got confused for a stage prop but is actually a demon-summoning artifact or something similar (I'm thinking kinda like board game in Jumanji)?
a script for one of Shakespeare's plays, that somehow pre-dates Shakespeare? (so the play couldn't have been written by him)
What if there's this guy living underneath the theatre, sneaking around and pretending to be some sort of, like, spirit or specter or something? Maybe he has a hideously deformed face that he hides under a mask and... ...Wait a minute.
Firstly, the object must kindle the interest of the protagonist. A book containing a secret would just appear to be an old book until she read it, but why would she read it? How about a portrait of a woman, used as a stage prop decades previously. The woman in the portrait looks exactly like your protagonist.
An old script of a play that never took off. The rehearsals were full of strange accidents and people died. The director committed suicide. Nobody knows who wrote the script. But the script itself is very good and much more interesting than her current script. It looks like someone did not want the script to be found.
*ahem* *sings* "The Phaaaaannnntom of the Opera is here... inside your mind..." (my Facebook profile picture is me dressed in a PotO theatrical costume)
I recently read a short story in a local anthology where the MC was an actor in a theater production of MacBeth. Little by little throughout the night, beginning backstage and ending with the final curtain call, he realizes the murders on stage are actually real, committed by actors who are already dead. Maybe you could do something similar where there's a ghostly performance onstage, but the audience thinks they're alive? There was an episode of the TV show Angel around 2001 that had a similar plot...it was cool.
Japan has an equivalent - it's called the "Yotsuya Kaidan", which tells the tale of the ghost of Oiwa. Whenever a production of it is put on, the cast and crew visit the shrine of Oiwa in Tokyo to make an offering to her (although there are two competing Oiwa shrines).
