Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Acotaciones Journal of Research in Theatre and Theatrical Creation

Abstract

The mirror exercise is a basic exercise in actor training. Mirrors are ubiquitous in dance halls. Theatre has been considered metaphorically as the glass where society gazes itself. From a philo-sophical perspective, the main question addressed here is: «How does reflectiveness concern imagination and performance?» This article in-quires on both sides of the mirror about the transmutation of ideas into images and the reverse, exploring whether physical bodies can perform subtlety. Drawing on Foucault’s heterotopia, Merleau-Ponty’s phenom-enology of perception, Deleuze’s monism, the Sufi concept of barzakh(Ibn ’Arabi, Corbin), Tantric pratibimba, and Taoist mirror-mind, the study gathers several transcendental philosophies into a common in-terpretation in which the visible and the invisible mirror one another. The analysis extends from the mimetic tradition and the proscenium as reflective device, through Eco’s semiotics of mirrors and Bachelard’s phenomenology of water, to Chekhov’s imaginative technique and con-temporary CPT-symmetric universe theory. By tracing the mirror from pedagogical exercise to ontological instrument, the article argues that imagination operates not as reproductive imitation but as performative movement, and that reflectiveness constitutes an ethical and creative condition for both performer and spectator.

First Page

411

Last Page

447

DOI

Rubén Vega Balbás. (2026). Imagination and its mirror. Acotaciones. Journal of Research in Theatre and Theatrical Creation, 1(56), 411–447. https://doi.org/10.32621/ACOTACIONES.2026.56.14

Publication Date

6-2026

Language

eng

Rights

open access

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