Prologue
from Eldest Daughter: A play in 3 Acts
In the corner of my childhood bedroom sat a large white toybox.
Maybe it had once been a cedar chest. I don’t know.
What I do know is that it overflowed with Barbies, plastic horses, Strawberry Shortcake dolls and the desperate, frantic, heart racing clutter of two little girls told to clean their room.
The outside of it was rough, sun-worn, like the upholstery of an old car.
The inside was dark. Walnut-shell brown. Hollow.
It made a perfect stage.
I used to climb on top of it and perform. Hands on hips. Microphone in the air.
Hair moving in an imaginary wind. Sometimes I sang to roaring crowds.
And in other moments I bowed deep and dramatically after bringing down the house to my admirers.
Naturally.
One afternoon my sister and I decided to play Houdini. Escape artists were having a cultural moment in the eighties, apparently. So we dumped every toy onto the floor and I climbed inside the box.
She shut the lid. And for the first time of our little lives it locked. There was no magic in that moment. No applause. Only walnut colored darkness.
Air getting smaller. Tighter.
Ten minutes passed before help came. Ten minutes inside a box I had once called a stage.
Turns out, I am not built to play the part of a master magician.
I was the oldest of three girls in a house where survival required performance.
Where tone directed our day. Where silence was a soundtrack.
Where laughter was often canned.
People don’t think of theatre when they think of central Illinois and its wide flat lands. Yet, I took a master class in my living room.
Daniel Day-Lewis calls it method acting: I just called it Tuesday.
The role changed constantly. Daughter. Peacekeeper. Entertainer.
I never left the set.
Except when I climbed on our toybox and chose who I wanted to be.
There are two versions of me.
The one on top of the box: loud, beaming, fearless. The one who knows how to make a room breathe easier. Make others cheer and laugh.
And the one still inside it.
The girl who learned how to stay small. Still. Quiet. Waiting for the lid to open.
Macbeth once said life is only a poor player, strutting his hour upon the stage.
But for me? The stage has always been the only place I felt rich and alive.
I have been performing a very long time, turns out there isn’t a key to the toybox.
