The greatest community theater story ever told

Or at least my favorite that happened this week and involves my daughter.

Day 1, Performance 1

4:23 p.m. 3 hours, 7 minutes until showtime. I don’t know who’s more nervous my daughter or me ha ha of course I do it’s me. Showtime is fast approaching and I can’t concentrate on whatever it is I’m supposed to be writing. “Are you ner—” I start to ask before she cuts me off because that’s the only question anyone has asked her all day.

She’s been in many school performances, and I was nervous before all of them, too. But this is different. She didn’t have to audition for those. She had to beat out a whole bunch of people for this production (Puffs, a comedy set in the Harry Potter world) at of our local community college. At 16, she is the youngest person in the cast by several years.

6 p.m. 90 minutes until showtime. It’s absolutely pouring rain out. I suppose it doesn’t matter unless there’s a power outage … oh, no, please, God, no power outage.

This isn’t even close to the worst weather she’s had for a performance. One time, all of a sudden everybody’s phones started blaring at the same time in the middle of a scene while she was talking. The blaring was a tornado warning arriving instantaneously in everyone’s pocket, or at least everyone’s pocket who wasn’t courteous enough to mute their phone when the show started.

She just kept going as if nothing happened. I asked her how she did that—how did that distraction not paralyze her?—but she shrugged it off. “What else was I going to do?” she said. Break character, stop to see what the hell all the ruckus is, or maybe even freak out, I thought, but didn’t say.

After that scene, the director came on stage and said people could leave if they wanted, but we were already in a basement (of a church) so we might as well stay. So that’s what happened. The show must go on, eh?

7:28 p.m. 2 minutes until showtime.

I was proud of her for auditioning, prouder still when she got a call back and proud to bursting when she got cast, all of which I had to hide because my exuberant reactions drive my kids nuts. My joy needs to be masked and I don’t know how to do that. Originally this paragraph was 765 words long, but I’m trying to play it cool.

She has a line—The Line—I’m super-excited to hear. I don’t know what it is because she won’t tell me. She suggested it to the director — this particular show has a lot of room for experimentation — and he liked it so much he said if the show had t-shirts, it would go on the back.

7:34 p.m. 4 minutes past showtime. One of the productions she was in had major technical problems that prompted a 30-minute delay in the middle of the show. Please oh please don’t let that happen on opening ni—woops, here we go.

7:38 p.m. There she is! Who took my girl and turned her into a grownup?

7:41 p.m. First line!

8:57 p.m. There’s something different going on here but I can’t put my finger on what it is.

9:23 p.m. The Line! Content-wise, it is hilarious. But there is too much ambient noise, so some people, including my wife and other daughter, don’t hear it. The director is right: It would be great on a t-shirt.

9:45 p.m. She emerges from backstage with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on her face.

10:07 p.m. I figure out what was different. Most times, I can hear the nervousness in her voice or see it in her body language. She is, after all, my kid. This time, she seemed so natural I almost forgot it was her. Not for nothing, but her character’s personality could not be less like her real one.

Day 2, Performance 2

12:13 p.m. I’m not there for the matinee. I wonder how The Line will go.

Day 2, Performance 3

7:27 p.m. 3 minutes until showtime. She was so good last night I’m not nervous at all except, well … except her grandparents are here and seated where she’ll be able to see them from the stage. She doesn’t like that in general, but especially so considering she will tell a dirty joke and say a bad word.

She’s been pretty good at not doing that in front of me and my wife. But I was a teen-ager once and remain a prolific potty mouth, so I know she does this when she’s not on stage. But there’s a difference between joking and swearing with your friends and joking and swearing on stage in front of 100 people including your grandparents. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

9:23 p.m. She totally crushes The Line (which contains the aforementioned bad word). A friend in the audience who knows of my abundant use of four-letter words tells me later, “yep, she’s your daughter.”

10:09 p.m. I text a friend with decades of experience in the theater world that as good as opening night was, this was way better. Everything about the show was better, my daughter included. He writes back: “The process is only half complete on opening night. The other 50 percent is learned from the audience.”

He also teaches me a Yiddish word: naches, which he says is “pride or gratification, especially at the achievements of one’s children. It’s what you got.”

Day 3, Performance 4

9:35 p.m. Another show that was better than the one before it. At some point the show has to stop improving, right? It can’t keep getting better show after show …

Day 4, Performance 5

3:25 p.m. … Or maybe it can.

In her final scene in her final performance, she nails The Line again … all right, I’ll tell you. As she engages evil wizards in battle, she yells, “DIE BITCHES!” then swirls and twirls to curse them.

It’s all for naught. Her character dies. Her collapse to the stage shocks the two people sitting next to me, and they shout simultaneously, “NO!”

3:26 p.m. Overflowing with naches.