Local youngster hitting road as cast member for touring show

URBANA – When their daughter was asked to take a role in a recent production at Krannert Center, Brent and Tammi O'Neill had no clue as to what kind of opportunity she was receiving.

"We never thought it would end up so amazing for her," Tammi said.

Caroline, a third-grader at Next Generation School, not only played a key character in The Builders Association's "Continuous City"; she will also travel with the new show, which had its world premiere last month at Krannert – a financial and technical supporter of the project.

As a result, Caroline, who turned 9 on Sept. 25, will have some impressive venues to list on her resume: the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival; the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; as well as festivals in Belgium; Vienna, Austria; and Toronto.

"I'm happy to be in the show and to be able to travel with them and do all the stuff," Caroline said during an interview at Krannert, where she spent six busy weeks rehearsing earlier this semester. "They're fun to work with, and they're kind of like a best-friend family. Everyone knows me. Everyone says hi. It kind of warms me up."

Caroline and her mother, who acted as a paid guardian for her daughter while she worked on the show, first met Builders Association director Marianne Weems and other members of the New York-based performance and media company in the summer of 2007 in Urbana, after they asked Krannert to recommend a local girl to work with in the initial stages of creating "Continuous City."

Krannert's Tammey Kikta asked local theater companies for a recommendation and heard of Caroline. Weems and other Builders Association members were so taken with her that they asked her to join the show and tour with them.

(The Builders Association also hired 11-year-old Olivia Timothee, a professional actress who lives in New York, as an alternate, mainly in case one of the two girls falls ill during the tour.)

In February, Tammi and Caroline took their first trip ever to New York City to attend a "Continuous City" development workshop. While there, they spent time with Builder Association members and its artistic director Weems, who has worked with the likes of David Byrne, Disney Imagineering, the Wooster Group and the late Susan Sontag.

In "Continuous City," Caroline plays 9-year-old Sam, who lives with her nanny Deb in a McMansion in Champaign, while her father travels the world seeking investors for Xubu, a video-chat Internet site. "Continuous City," a multimedia piece, examines the connections people make over great distances via Xubu.

Audience members see Mike, portrayed by Harry Sinclair, who also wrote much of the piece, only on the many video screens on the set, with the cities as his backdrops, video-chatting with the emotionally remote Sam and his boss, J.V. (Rizwan Mirza), the hard-pushing Xubu developer who often tells Mike, "Family comes first," but really doesn't mean it.

Eventually Sam develops a closer relationship with her Deb, played by Moe Angelos, who co-wrote with Weems the hilarious text for Deb's video blogs, or Vlogs, which are part of the show.

Deb's vlogs tell of her impressions of the Champaign-Urbana area – for example, the "silent mono-crop" of corn that she at first finds mildly threatening. Each time The Builders Association takes "Continuous City" to a new venue, Angelos will write new Vlogs specific to the performance locale.

"'Continuous City' will continue to morph and transform because Moe's blogs will change and other flashes of brilliance will come along to change how the story is told," said Tammi O'Neill, who described Weems as brilliant, as well as patient with and kind to Caroline.

The O'Neills are justifiably proud of their only child's performance in "Continuous City." According to Tammi O'Neill, Weems told Caroline, immediately after the world premiere at Krannert, "That was perfect."

Caroline's prior theater experience was relatively minor – mainly small roles in two Bright Lights Theater productions and as Queen Titania in an all-children production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in England, where she and her parents lived for a while.

Caroline said she had to learn a lot of lines for "Continuous City," which was continually revised up until the Sept. 19 opening at Krannert. She admitted to feeling nervous at times and under a lot of pressure.

"It was hard work," she said. "They did lots of changes. They had four different scripts. There was the old and the new. It was hard to keep track. It was kind of hard because I was doing math and science and all these things at school using the different half of my brain."

As Sam, Caroline at first was told to act snotty. Later, she was told to be sad and "bland," which she did well, coming off as a withdrawn girl who at one point communicates with Deb via her computer, even though Deb stands only a few feet away. Caroline also is chatty; her parents can't believe she remained quiet, as the role required, on stage during the first 20 or so minutes of the production.

Caroline, who also plays violin, volleyball and soccer, said some days she feels she would like to be an actress, and some days, a veterinarian.

"And sometimes I just want to be a normal kid," she said.

Also on this date

• More moms are unmarried -- and for many, it's a choice
• And baby makes two: Series overview
• Being single and a mom: One woman's story
• Black mothers more likely to be unmarried
• Feeling the Pinch: Volunteers trade time for free entertainment
• Hospice volunteers offer comfort in a time of great need
• Student groups pushing to get voters registered by deadline
• Obituaries

» More