Through the Looking-Glass (version 5 dramatic reading)

What happens when you step through a mirror into a world where everything runs backward? Alice finds out in this sequel to Alice in Wonderland, where she enters a realm that is the reverse of her own: poems read from last line to first, babies transform into old men, and time itself moves in impossible directions. Here, Alice is a pawn in a colossal chess game, advancing across the board toward the eighth square as she encounters the insufferable Humpty Dumpty, the battling Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen who lives backwards, and the fearsome Red Queen who runs without ever reaching her destination. Carroll weaves logic puzzles and linguistic games into the fabric of this dreamscape, culminating in the immortal nonsense poem "Jabberwocky," with its iconic "frabjous day" and "chortle." The result is a world that feels like a fever dream rendered with mathematician's precision. Through the Looking-Glass endures because it captures something essential about childhood: the sense that the adult world's rules are arbitrary, and that behind the looking glass, anything is possible.