A Star Is Born

It's not just pride that I say this: My daughter makes a great zombie.

On Friday night, I went to see her perform in "Night of the Living Dead" at the high school. She appeared in four scenes.

Thirty minutes before curtain time, when the audience began to take its seats, there were two sheet-covered corpses plainly visible on stage. As the play began, the corpses came to mindless life, rising from under their coverings with obvious effort. The audience was completely surprised; neither of the corpses had so much as twitched until the music began.

One of those two reanimated corpses was my daughter...she'd told me what to expect at the beginning of the play, so I'd been paying very close attention to them, and to the audience's reaction when they came to life. It was perfect...simply perfect.

If you've ever tried to lay still for half an hour, perfectly still, without breathing perceptibly, for half an hour, you get an idea of how she began her performance on Friday night. And she did it on the hard floor of the stage.

The discipline she can find, when she wants to, is nothing short of astonishing.

And that was only the beginning of her performance. It's been said that there are no small parts, only small actors. Heidi took that saying to heart, and though she had no spoken lines, she poured herself into the process of becoming her character on stage. She watched the film several times, then moved on to other zombie films, taking notes and pulling ideas from at least a half dozen places. She perfected a twitchy walk-of-the-undead that truly looked as though she only partially remembered how to move, and then she added a painful-sounding wheeze...the effect was stunning.

Afterwards, as I drove her home, she asked my opinion, and I told her honestly that I was amazed.

Last night, over dinner, she told me of plans for the musical, "Guys and Dolls".

"Will you audition?" I asked.

"Of course, Dad," she said.

Then she smiled a small smile.

I guess we'll be seeing some musicals now.