Lucy's Shakespearean Debut

If “all the world’s a stage,” like the Melancholy Jacques says in As You Like It, my daughter Lucy will be just thrilled. Unlike her mother, who gets butterflies in her stomach at the very idea, Lucy practically leaps onto center stage. When she was born, she thought the midwife was her first audience, and she has spent the next almost-five years of her life developing her stage voice to perfection.

A month ago, the Yale Center for British Art hosted a “Pirate and Princess Day,” which (of course!) we attended, in full pirate regalia. (Pirates are more dramatic than princesses.) As if the chance to dress up in public wasn’t enough excitement, music, activities and sugar-filled snacks were provided. ;)
 

Lucy’s favorite activity--no surprise--was the mini-production of “Shakespeare’s Scottish Play,” by the Elm Shakespeare Company. First, a note on the company: every summer, we’re treated to top-notch, beautifully conceived and directed and staged, amazingly-acted, FREE Shakespeare plays, outside under the stars in Edgerton Park, one of my favorite places in the world. If you’re ever in Connecticut in the late summer, you have to go to one of their plays.
 

For Pirate Day, two actresses, in lovely princess garb, announced they would be casting, directing, rehearsing, and performing the opening of Act I, Scene 1 of Macbeth. They chose three innocent-looking girls to be the witches, then three rather rambunctious youngsters to be “sound effects.” While the witches were doubling and bubbling, Lucy slowly made her way through the crowd and over to the sound effect corner. When the actress looked back from watching the witches, suddenly she found four children awaiting her direction. She smilingly waved off my attempts to corral my daughter, and started assigning sounds.
 

“Okay,” she said to the wildest of the bunch--the little boy who couldn’t keep his legs from wiggling.  “You need to be our wolf. Let’s hear a big howl.”
 

What we heard was: “Um. A...oo.” Or, at least we saw his lips move like that.
 

“All right...” said the actress. “I think we need two wolves so everyone can hear you.” She chose an older boy from the audience, and together--staring frozen at the audience--they made a howl about as loud as a wolf spider might make.
 

“Well, we’ll move on,” said the actress. “Next we need the sounds of a scary storm.” The little girl destined for storminess took one look at the audience and let out a mewl.
 

“Um...and raging wind.” The actress turned to Lucy. “Do you want to be wind?”
 

“No,” said Lucy.
 

“Oh...okay. Do you want to be the storm?”
 

“No.”
 

“Well,” said the actress, taking Lucy’s personality in stride with seasoned skill, “often it’s best if actors do their roles the way they want. So, what sound would you like to make?”
 

With a big grin and not a trace of stagefright, Lucy let out a loud, trumpeting roar.
 

“Wow, that was a very scary sound,” said the actress. “What is it?”
 

Lucy said, “An elephant!”
 

I will forever be grateful to that actress for resisting the urge to laugh along with the audience; instead, quite seriously, she said, “You know, I think a big scary elephant is exactly what Macbeth needs.”
 

During the performance, the actress called out, “Cue the wind!”
 

We heard a slight whistling sound.
 

“Cue the storm!”
 

Some hesitant clapping.
 

“Cue the wolves!”
 

We couldn’t actually hear anything over the whispering of the audience.
 

“Cue the scary elephant!”
 

Lucy trumpeted with all her might.

Shakespeare might have said that Lucy was “born under a merry star.” She certainly intends to be a merry star. And I am very grateful every day for the way she shares her joy and herself with the world.