The Art of Serious Playtime

See that girl in the black tutu hanging from the bar? That would be me.

I won a baby beauty pageant. Clearly, I am elated about my win and can’t wait to use my platform for human rights. Take that Miss California!

***

My father snores as loud as a dragon. It’s like the white flag of surrender on the home front. It means my father is sleeping deeply and that my mother, the light sleeper and bad cop, is sleeping even deeper and not going to wake for anything. It means that now I can run amuck.


People always tried to give me Barbie dolls. My mother would always have to secretly return them. I found it a bit of a scam that all Barbie dolls had the same no- life facial expression. I knew it was all a big trick when for a Christmas or Easter, or some other excessively commercialized holiday, I was given a Skipper doll who is supposed to be Barbie’s sister or friend or some other supporting character in the world of Barbie. I held the little, inhumanly thin doll and inspected her. She did have long and pretty dark hair--the kind of hair that Barbie certainly would be caught dead in. When I pushed Skipper’s hair out of her face, I threw her across the room in complete terror. It was Barbie’s glazed, blue-shadowed gaze looking back at me! It was like a Barbie Frankenstein. Some monster had put Barbie’s head on Skipper’s body. That’s when I went and locked all of them in the big pink Barbie trunk under my bed. I swear, at night I could hear them whining and scratching with their long perfect pink talons against the cold plastic of the sugar-pink Barbie trunk and pleading in high distorted soprano to be let out.

No matter where you go in our modest house you can’t escape the roar of my father’s dreams. I hear him as I creek open my door, spilling my star night light all over the hall. My house is not my house at night. It is deathly quiet with strange shadow creatures slithering all over the powder blue walls. The house sighs and creeks with history. I know this is an impossible and dangerous task, but I will have to endure it. I gather my strength and clutch Allosaurus tightly to my heart, and we venture into the great beyond.

I had begun to believe that I was relatively defective in relating to other kids about pretend time. All the other little girls loved Barbie. However, my imagination seemed way too realistic in relation to toys or dolls. It certainly didn’t help that I believed that Barbie was a blonde demon I had captured in a trunk under my bed. It was terrible trying to pretend with other little kids. They were way out of their league. I took imagination time very seriously, and you did not mess around with Allison’s pretend time. It was like I was born on fire. I came into this world with passion seeping out my pores with an intensive thirst for life. I had so very much to do, there were so many places to visit and characters to be and meet. My adamant belief in the pretend world and immersion within my own world made me an outsider nearly right away.

I don’t remember who gave them to me because I was blinded by my immediate love for them. It was a thirty-piece, and scientifically accurate, dinosaur set. This was not just any kid’s play set, mind you, but real life miniature replicas with the scientific names printed on their bellies, little beady eyes that locked with yours and each one a totally different character. They all felt so incredibly alive in my hands. I could feel their little hearts thumping in my palm just aching to go into my world--not like the corpse of the cold Barbie.

Each dinosaur was a very specific person with a very specific voice and personality. It wasn’t long before their true natures began to emerge. The Raptor with his blackish green gothic-type skin was a huge chain smoker with a manic-depressive personality who wore only faded-out black. Tyrannosaurus was a big girly girl who, to her dismay, would continually bite her tongue as a nervous tick. Triceratops, who was the villian, spoke with a wet lisp and was always running around trying to stir up some trouble. Of course, there was the horrible but fantastic womanizer: the Duck-billed Dinosaur with his slick swap-blue skin. It was like a daily dinsosaur soap opera-- love, betrayel, fighting passion, and all under the looming threat of being obliterated by a giant comet or massive volcanic eruption. This all depended on my mood of course.
There was also the heroine of dinosaur land. She had intense ridged-red skin with round, little bright eyes. It was the Allosaurus. Of course, it was probably the play on my name that helped encourage that relationship. I don’t think it had to be dinosaurs. My interest in them wasn’t scientific. Although, of course, I did have a fairly regular role as the walk-on paleontologist in case my dinosaur series needed some scenes in the present-- when all the dinosaurs were just bones in the dirt.

I walk quickly keeping my heels from patting the floor. I looked in her eyes and she assures me that we would absolutely be fine. “Don’t worry, everyone’s asleep. They won’t hear you. How long have we been thinking about this? ” Allosaurus and I hold our breath, and we quietly sneak toward the bookcase with my heart in my throat as my eyes dart wildly around the room. With a shaking hand I open the bookcase to reveal a dusty book on one of the forgotten shelves. It’s my grandmother’s bookcase, and I am “so not” allowed to touch it. I pick up this old book I have been eyeing for months, and I can barely contain myself from crying out in excitement. This is the book that holds all the secrets of my inherited performance past.

I was promptly enrolled in children’s theatre and acting classes as a hope of getting some of my impossible creative energy out. I couldn’t believe that my fantasy world was a career option; even from such a young age it just felt right. Even before my dinosaurs I had an overactive imagination and was obsessed with my overgrown backyard. I would spend hours and hours outside imagining I was someone else. The story was nearly always the same. I was always some sort of warrior princess who was a master fighter exploring mystical lands. It all seemed so real. The details of my castle seemed more real and tangible then my own little house.
It was so obvious that I would go into theatre. My parents didn’t even attempt to interest me in other things. They both already knew it was a lost cause. There was no moment for me--no single moment-- where the light bulb flicked on and I thought, “Oh, so I’m an actor, that’s great. I guess I’ll go to Juilliard, win an Oscar and that’s that.” I am still suspicious of anyone who claims to have a very specific moment when the acting bug bit them. I’m convinced that there has to be an actor gene. How else could I have possibly known? How could my parents, a piano teacher and a businessman, have known?

“Don’t worry, everyone’s completely asleep. They won’t hear you.” Allosaurus and I held our breath as we opened the book, and I turned on my Disney Princess flashlight. There it was and as plain as day. The book was in Russian, but I knew what it said. This is why they have been hiding me out here in the suburbs. I’m part of the long lost Romanov family! No wonder everyone thinks I’m so crazy! In a fever I drop Allosaurus and everything comes falling down. I hear the snoring stop, and I hear my mother in a panic coming toward me. “ Oh, It’s all over now so you might as well pack your bags-- they are going to send you back to Russia to peal potatoes!”, a disgruntled Allosaurus moans from the floor. “Allison Marie! What are you doing in there?! It’s 2 am! You are never going to get up for school tomorrow...” Just like that, my mother pulls me back into the real world.

Just as my eyes are hazel and my skin is pale, my heart and soul are that of a performer. My family is of the sensible stock, and I am a first-generation actor. When I was little, I firmly believed that my father’s Eastern European heritage could be traced back to some sort of mystical Russian gypsy troupe that probably entertained the Romanovs and even that I potentially was the lost Anastasia herself. Actually, I still sort of believe that--the gypsy part anyway.

I can’t even recall a time I didn’t want to be an actor. I could never understand how other kids and later young adults didn’t know what to pursue. I took my first formal class when I was about eight. I had my first lead role by the time I was ten in Jane Eyre, and my life has continued to be fantasy based. By becoming a vessel for storytelling, theatre and acting helped me harass all my creative ability. I wasn’t just an over active child anymore. I was a well employed child actor.

I have always found our world somewhat unsatisfying. My pretend backyard kingdoms were more beautiful, my dinosaur friends were funnier, and I, myself, had a far more glamorous nature in a pretend world. I have always been looking for something better even if it doesn’t exist. By utilizing the power of imagination as an actor, I am able to hook in to the underlying truth that exists in fantasy and reality.
Acting in its rawest state is playing. It is saying yes to whatever circumstances of the world have been designed for you regardless of the role you play in the real world. I don’t think that I ever grew out of pretend. I just matured and made it the professional part of my life. I just put the dinosaurs away and went to theatre college.
I pursue acting everyday completely seriously--just as I took speaking to my dinosaurs and as I believed that my Barbie and Skipper dolls were trying to claw their way out of a trunk. I have grown up with my life centered completely on make believe. I think all of us theatre and film artists have Peter Pan complexes. We all just want to tell stories and certainly do not want to grow up in the traditional sense of the mundane.
Our world is not all friendly dinosaurs. Luckily for me, my interest in characters and my obsession with fantasies are enough to keep my actor’s head above water. Nothing has really changed. I still want to tell stories, my stories, your story, stories that need to be heard. I want to walk in other people’s shoes, and I want to bring light to lives so often forgotten. The only difference is now--I want to bring the audience along with me.