The first time I saw King Lear performed was in 1964 -- the year of Shakespeare's quadricentennial. I was a high school senior and Shakespeare was everywhere in Los Angeles that year. Morris Carnovsky (originally an actor in Yiddish Theater) was Lear in that production and he brought me right to the heart of Lear -- the man and the play.

Eleven years later, we watched Lear at the festival in Ashland, Oregon. I'd just given my five-year old daughter a journal to record (or draw) her dreams in, and the next morning she wrote her first entry. She said I could see it, and I read her words (sounded-out, spelled phonetically) about walking to Goneril's house and yelling at Regan. I loved how the play had entered her dreams, already becoming part of her inner-imagery.