I’m sitting in the auditorium writing while Zeke is rehearsing for the spring performance at my college. This will be her fifth performance here, beginning when she was 10 and played the part of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, followed by her performance in the musical Batboy, in which she played Ruthie who had to die on stage, and an old grandma in the chorus. Her next role was Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet, then Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank last year. Now she’s playing Ursula, the best friend of the female lead – and a stalker (apparently) – in Bye-Bye Birdie. As I sit here watching the rehearsals, I’m reminded of her very first performance on the opening night of Midsummer’s Night Dream. She was sharing the stage with a college boy who was her alter ego (the director cast two Pucks for that show, and the pair shared the lines and the limelight). That night she endured two incidents that would have frozen me mid-stage had they happened to me. The first was the development of a nose bleed in the first act. She played her entire role with her head cocked at some sort of weird angle, which I took as a Puck affectation, but which was her effort to keep the blood off her costume. The second incident was the fury of the second Puck, who misunderstood her attempt to save him when he forgot some of his lines, and thus thought she was trying to steal his part. He exploded at her at the intermission, and she still had the presence of mind to walk on stage and interact with him as though everything was normal for the second act. “The show must go on,” she said, when I told her how impressed I was. “Anyone would have done the same thing.” Keep in mind that she was 10 years old, and only just 10 years old. She turned 10 during rehearsals, so she’d only been a “double digit” for a few weeks.
Now, as I sit and watch her in a half circle on stage, singing with a crowd of college students, I’m amazed at how she has grown up. She’s gaining height, and she carries herself like someone much older, with a confidence that it took me decades to develop. How can two introverted, shy parents have given birth to the whirlwind that is Zeke?
“Speak to me now, oh beautiful one,” she says—well, moans and roars at the same time—“Tell us how you make that glorious sound that even now, in anticipation of it, has reduced me to a snarling, panting, raging jungle beast!”
“Again,” the music director orders, “Meaner! Someone give her some coffee.”
She snarls it again, louder, with more panting hunger on the last five words, and everyone laughs. I’d be embarrassed, but she’s right out there with it, fearless and confident, at home with the faculty, and with the students, most of whom will spend their two or three years here and move on with no more connection to the campus than to the local grocery store. But Zeke is different. This campus is her second home. Since she was born she’s been here for meetings and performances, has thrown pots in the clay room, has served coffee to the speech faculty, has answered phones when the department secretary has had to run off for a minute. She knows everyone in the English Department, and many of the other faculty in Arts and Sciences.
She’s singing now without her script, having already memorized the songs, mouthing the words spoken by the other actors under her breath. Four years ago she had the entire script of A Midsummer Night’s Dream memorized. She’ll probably do the same with this one, then forget it the day after they strike the set. That’s her way, quick to remember, quick to forget, quick to change in mood and attitude. But enduring at her center is the girl who can keep it all together on stage even when she’s got a nose bleed under the lights, the girl whose smile calls forgiveness on her after she’s driven people mad with her energy and her moodiness. Once again I watch her build her character there on the stage as I have done four times before, and marvel that this extraordinary girl is my daughter.
