The theater is a place of infinite possibility, where we can become anyone, go anywhere, summon any time period, replay situations, and rewrite outcomes. It’s a place where everything is progress, carrying us toward the plot’s prescribed ending. But the stage is also where people pretend to be others, where illusion reigns and you’re never quite certain whether you can walk through a doorway, whether a blade will stab or retract. It’s a place of unsurety, and a place of lies. But that’s also its magic, the magic of art: that only by lying can it reveal its truth. Talk about twisted.

My novel, Play, With Knives, is a little twisted. It’s about a struggling theater troupe touring the modern-day Midwest by train; only, the train is a kind of dreamspace, where random aspects of the playwright’s writings come to life and wreak havoc.

Whether involving magic, set in a dream or an alternate reality, or just featuring dark themes or a flailing main character, these novels set in the theatrical world are all a little twisted in some way too. As you’d expect, their themes center on performance, the shifting nature of identity, and the blurred boundaries between reality and fantasy. 

A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke

Yes, that Ethan Hawke, but drop your preconceptions, because this book is  fantastic.  It’s about an actor navigating the aftermath of his failed marriage and turning to all the wrong things—booze, sex, rage, self-hatred—all while performing in a Broadway production of Henry IV. Actors say Hawke’s descriptions of what it’s really like to be onstage are the best they’ve read. The book is messy and hilarious and a poetic tribute to the healing power of art. It’s based loosely on events in Hawke’s life, so there’s a gossipy element too. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

You’ve likely heard of this speculative hit, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2014 and was recently named a “Best Book of the 21st Century” by The New York Times. The novel is about a Shakespearean theater troupe traveling the Great Lakes region 15 years after a flu pandemic decimated the world’s population and, with it, civilization. Their tour takes them to a town controlled by a dangerous prophet who they must overcome to save their lives and the lives of others. Along the way, they risk everything for art.

Edith Holler by Edward Carey

 The book revolves around  Edith Holler, whose father tells her that their family’s theater will come crumbling down if she ever steps foot outside it. Confined to its walls, she writes a play based on a local fable about a woman who uses children’s blood to make a regional delicacy. When her father suddenly marries the heir to the company that makes the product, Holler discovers the truth behind the tale and must act fast to protect her family, their theater, her play, and the town’s children.

Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Another National Book Award finalist, this one from 2004, Madeleine Is Sleeping is told in tiny chapters, most a page or less in length, some just a sentence. It’s about a girl who falls into a deep and lasting sleep. Within her extensive dream, she leaves her small French village, joins a circus, and falls in love with one of its eccentric performers, which include a fartiste (exactly what it sounds like), a woman with wings, and another who is gradually becoming her husband’s viol. 

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

This book I picked up purely due to its fun cover, and it didn’t disappoint. Set in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War, it tells the story of two unemployed potters who, on a whim, visit a quarry holding prisoners of war. The potters share a love of poetry and wine and, after asking the prisoners to recite a few well-known lines in exchange for food, come up with the idea to use them in a full-fledged production of Medea. As mishaps unfold, they soon realize that making art can be no less risky than making war.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Here’s an author who did write about magicians. Morgenstern fully leans into fantasy with this novel about a circus that mysteriously arrives by train to present its audience with marvelous amazements. It’s about two young people, both orphans raised by powerful magicians, who are being trained to compete in a duel only one of them can survive. Of course, along the way they fall in love. My favorite part of this book was being dazzled by the magicians’ increasingly astounding displays.

Wise Children by Angela Carter

Carter’s Nights at the Circus also would have been perfect for this list, but instead, I’ve selected Wise Children, the author’s last novel and one about living. It’s a fictionalized memoir that tells the life story of twin actresses, detailing all the Shakespearean twists and turns of their theatrical family’s foibles. The prose is lyrical, even while the narration is as hilarious and entertaining as you’d expect from a professional vaudevillian. 

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

This is Woolf’s last novel and no less masterful than her others, full of gorgeous sentences and deeply interwoven themes. On the grounds of an English country house, a community is putting on a play celebrating English history. Over the course of a single day, we follow along as they prepare for and deliver the performance in three acts. The play tells the story of the nation but also of its individuals, muddling the past with the present, reality with the imagined, and asking where performance ends.

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Again and again, this novel draws comparison to dark-academia darling The Secret History, and not without good reason. It takes place on a college campus, where a group of actors is putting on a Shakespearean production. They’ve previously been typecast—as hero, villain, temptress, etc.—but find that for this performance, they’ve been assigned different parts. The actors lean in, soon embodying their roles offstage as well as on, and the play’s violence precipitates a real-life death, testing their friendships, their acting skills, and their understanding of truth itself.