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| Tony Winner: Daisy Eagan |
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| Daisy Eagan gets aggressive for acting stint in Palo Alto |
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| By Jim Aquino |
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At the age of 11, Daisy Eagan became the
toast of Broadway - and the youngest Tony
award-winner ever - for her performance in
1991's The Secret Garden. The award
forever changed Eagan's life, although the
moment when presenter Audrey Hepburn handed
her the trophy is almost a blur to her today.
"The night was so jam-packed with stuff that
my brain went on overload. I was not
expecting to win at all. I was shocked and
just trying not to cry long enough to get the
words out and make sure that I thanked
everybody that I needed to thank," says
Eagen, now 22.
After taking some time off from acting, Eagan
returned to the national spotlight earlier
this year when her struggles to find work
again - and her frustrations with
showbiz - were captured on The It
Factor, the Bravo cable channel's reality
series about struggling actors. This summer,
a happier - and employed - Eagan is starring in
Palo Alto's TheatreWorks production of Be
Aggressive, playwright Annie Weisman's
coming-of-age comedy about Southern
California cheerleader culture. The play will
close Aug. 18.
Eagan plays Laura, a 17-year-old cheerleader
forced to cope with her mother's death. When
the play was first performed at Southern
California's La Jolla Playhouse last year,
the youthful-looking Eagan portrayed Laura's
11-year-old sister, Hannah.
Eagan says that she was drawn to Weisman's
script because it had roles for young women
that weren't patronizing or overly
sexualized.
"To find a play that has a young woman as the
lead, takes her seriously and listens to what
she has to say is rare. It's a great
opportunity. I hope that other playwrights
follow in Annie's footsteps and look at
female youth in a different way," Eagan says.
Because cheerleader culture was a totally
alien world to Eagan, she immersed herself in
some research for the role of Laura by
watching cheer competitions on ESPN and
reading journalist Rachel Simmons' recently
published book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden
Culture of Aggression in Girls.
"I read Odd Girl Out to look at the
way girls deal with aggression and conflict
because I know that kids have a hard time
dealing with somebody whose parent is dead,"
says Eagan, who lost her own mother when she
was 13 and has dedicated this performance to
her. "Girls are taught to be nice, sweet and
unthreatening, so that any time they have any
feelings that aren't nice, sweet and
unthreatening, they don't know what to do
with them. They can't really deal with those
feelings in a healthy way."
Shortly before her run with TheatreWorks,
Eagan had a brush with pre-Osbournes
reality-TV fame when she and 11 other actors
allowed cameramen to follow them around on
auditions, acting classes and sometimes
humiliating gigs for The It Factor.
During the series, Eagan's fans found out
about her struggles to land acting jobs and
the stage fright that she developed about her
singing as she grew older.
Eagan thinks that The It Factor would
make a great chapter for her memoirs someday.
"I wouldn't do it again, but it was
interesting while it lasted," she says.
Eagan isn't sure what she'll be doing with
her acting career after Be Aggressive.
She jokes that she's thinking of becoming a
yak farmer. But she has plenty of advice for
Bay Area child actors.
"The number-one thing I tell all kids is to
have fun. There's no reason to act unless you
want to do it. If somebody else is pushing
you to do it, you shouldn't be doing it.
Acting needs to come from inside, not from
outside," Eagan says. "Also, be real and
honest, always trust your instincts and be
open to direction, which a lot of kids have
trouble with. But mainly, have fun because
it's such a fun thing to do."
"Be Aggressive"will be performed Aug.
15-17 at 8 p.m., and Sun., Aug. 18, at 2
p.m., at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305
Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. For more
information, call 650.903.6000 or visit
www.theatreworks.org. Daisy Eagan's official
website is at www.daisyeagan.com.
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