Raised in theatre wings, a child can memorize entire shows better than the actors.

Evidence

From 1973, when I packed my three-year-old and all our worldly possessions in our VW bug to move to San Francisco to perform with The Cockettes, Viva remained in the wings and watched every rehearsal for every show I ever did up until 1977. While other kids played with kids their own age, her early companions were the drag queen performers I lived and worked with. They were a lot of fun, but it wasn’t always easy for her to get a word in. … She knew all the lines better than the actors in our shows and whenever anyone dropped a line, she would cue them from the sidelines. I told her that waiting in the wings was how Eve, in All About Eve, got her big break and that one day she’d get her turn to take the stage. — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 62

Categorization

• BMF: The child rehearsing in the wings and cueing lines evokes the precocious child absorbed into adult performance worlds, echoing the apprenticeship dynamic in The Namesake or a Possible relation — leaner match; better parallel is young Viva anticipating the narrator-child who internalizes adult scripts in Parable of the Sower.