Then there was a star danced

Emily Goddard is only just sixteen, but already, she has in her the makings of a star. As Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, she was fussy, curt, practical, ambitious, unsentimental, everything a Jewish mother ought to be. When she played Bernando in West Side Story, one could be forgiven if one thought she really was a he. Because I have known her a while now, I have taken her talent for granted. Familiarity breeds contempt, you see, or rather just more familiarity. Beauty becomes commonplace if you see it every day.

There was a VCE Drama Solo Performance showcase last week. Emily, as a grieving wife and mother after Guernica, if it didn't exactly bring me to tears, made my heart ache - especially as she chose to intersperse happier times between highly strung scenes. It was a very mature, heart wrenching performance, heightened with just a large, dark red velvet scarf draped in a myriad of ways to indicate scene changes and very clever, simple, lightning effects. A performance light years ahead of her peers, I have seen none to equal it in her age group in that genre.

I saw her at rehearsal earlier this week in blackrock, a play Tall Dark Guy is putting on in December. It's a very ambitious play, full of themes that I know I wouldn't been able to handle, much less understood and acted in front of an audience, when I was her age. Em's playing Rachel against Evan's Jarred, and even at rehearsal with its frequent stops and starts, I couldn't take my eyes off her.

You mark my words. Emily Goddard is a name you will come to know very well one day.