The Child of Theater Parents Finds Her Path
By Lucinda Linklater
This essay is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Fellowship
I remember the magic of my early visits to New York City so vividly that every time I return, it feels slightly disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the city and I’ll be moving there for college in the fall. But for the past couple years, my visits have been consumed by a search for that original sense of wonder.
My dad is acting in a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts at Lincoln Center right now and so I went to visit last weekend. There was one day where my younger half-sister and I were in the Green Room; she had been barred from sitting in the audience during rehearsals because she would always end up absentmindedly humming to herself — very loudly. We were hungry, so I suggested we get some lunch. We went to a diner. She got pancakes and a milkshake and then it started to snow.
At that moment, I remembered when I was around her age, praying on the plane ride that it would snow when I landed. I live in LA, so I was snow starved. I needed to experience the feeling of sticking my tongue out and catching intricate and three-dimensional icicles, much like the ones I saw in Frozen. I needed to make a snowman and become its friend. But every time I visited, I missed the snow.
So, sitting there in the diner with my half-sister, preparing to leave and to enter the storm, I thought: Maybe this is it. Maybe my childhood version of New York will return to me, or I’ll return to it, maybe I’ll once again experience that same sense of mystery and amazement. Maybe the snow will be the portal I’ve needed to re-enter the New York I once knew.
I think theater had a lot to do with why New York was so wondrous and exciting to me. I remember being 7 or 8, sitting in the audience of the Delacorte theater and watching my dad rehearse and perform. I wrote notes in a tiny notebook, I admired the actors and analyzed the play at length with them in their dressing rooms. They were performing Cymbeline by Shakespeare. I somewhat understood the words that were being said. I felt for the characters, and I sat in anticipation and sometimes foreboding.
When I approached high school age, I applied for an arts school where I would act for three hours every single day after lunch. I remember a good friend told me this very troubling story about her nanny who went to an arts school for theater and ended up detesting acting. It scared me to the point where I almost regretted my decision to attend the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). The idea of hating acting, detesting it, seemed to me at the time like a kind of death. But it also seemed impossible because acting was all I wanted to do. It was deeply ingrained in me. I remember after my parents split up, the melodramatic heading for my first bio on Instagram when I was 11: Actress and Child of Divorce.
Everything was so confusing when I was in elementary school. I was told I was going to have a half-sister, news which I felt permitted me to slam my bedroom door and scream the clichéd “You’re ruining my life!” Throughout those years, acting felt like a constant, something to lean on. I had rehearsals until 8 PM and a person I could pretend to be, a life I could pretend to have.
Therefore, because of my undying passion, I expected to be an exception to this idea of being engulfed by the imminent doom brought on by art schools, which my friend had forewarned. And yet, this friend turned out to be somewhat right: I saw myself slowly moving away from acting. And somehow, I didn’t die.
I should add that my mom is a playwright and screenwriter, and that when I wasn’t watching my dad’s rehearsals, I was being lulled to sleep by her writers group stories which would often seep into my dreams. I would wake up with such inspiration that I would write for hours some mornings at my little desk, and by lunch slip the pile of papers to my mom asking for her honest opinion. I was always trying to get my friends to partake in my newest play or screenplay. I have a plethora of old scripts from elementary school, many of them ripoffs of the Disney shows I was obsessed with, where characters said things like, “Move out of the way, four eyes!”
My decision to take writing more seriously was also attributed to the countless plays we read at LACHSA, many of which had a deep impact on me. Angels in America, How I Learned to Drive, The Flick, and A Delicate Balance. I also began seeing far more theater and examining it in an entirely new way. I focused more on the scripts than the production, trying to learn as much as I could about story structure and character arcs. I started to believe that, at least for myself, there was a deeper way to know characters than by only inhabiting them as an actor. In junior year I began writing my first full-length play, Swimming Pool. The story centers around two teenage friends visiting one of their step-grandmothers in Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. It explores the competitiveness of adolescence and the craving for adulthood, validation, and love.
Sometimes I think about my changing impression of New York in relation to my altered perception of theater. I think partly the original magic I found in New York came from being a viewer, an audience member, a listener. Growing up means becoming active, feeling that impulse to take part in the world and contribute to it. I’m grateful that I discovered how I wanted to tell stories, but with that comes an inevitable loss of childhood and innocence — the shift from simply experiencing the world, to participating in it.
In the fall I will be attending NYU for Dramatic Writing and living in New York for the next four years. I’m scared but mostly excited for New York to take on yet another form and become a home to me over time.
Last weekend, I held my half-sister’s hand and led her through the snow. She looked up at the sky, sticking her tongue out, paying no attention to the ground under her. I remembered being her age, led and persuaded by my dad that walking home is far more fun and rewarding than taking a taxi. It was strange and kind of wonderful, taking on that guiding role. I knew New York was not the same as it was and it never would be, but I felt satisfied with my new understanding of it.
P.S. I am directing my play Swimming Pool and it will be going up May 2nd and 3rd at The Let Live Theater. I hope you all come to see it! Stay up to date on @swimmingpoolplay on Instagram.
