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Adrenaline pumping through her veins, Kathleen walks off the stage after masterfully owning high-pitched notes in Annie’s finale song “I Don’t Need Anything but You.” Racing backstage, she grabs some napkins to dry off the sweat from her tanned forehead and straightens her red, curly wig. She waits outside in the lobby searching for her family when a crowd of unknown adults surrounds the second grader from America. “Zwin! Zwin!” beautiful beautiful they chant, handing her bouquet after bouquet of fresh flowers. Let’s say I’m in New York going to see my friend Ashley in Cats. Already I know my carefully arranged roses and baby’s breath belong to her. It would be a social faux pas, not to mention awkward, to give them to any other actress. In Morocco, their bouquets, guided by fate, belong to the best performer of all, and that performer was Kathleen Flowers.

Eleven years later, Kathleen sits in a comfy green chair at a Panera in Fort Worth, Texas, sipping on a mango smoothie. A sophomore theater major at TCU, she realized her passion for theater that moment in Morocco. She admits to never having received flowers from a performance after Annie. There was that one time her RA gave her some after her leading role in TCU Theater’s Volley Girls, but besides that, no one. “Isn’t it weird? Not even from my parents,” she says, flipping her braided long, golden hair towards her back.

Choosing theater as a career choice was easy. For Kathleen, growing up with a dad who was a Colonel in the army and a mom who was a musical theater teacher acting was the obvious choice after the military. Both theater and military require you “to play your part convincingly,” says Kathleen, from the entertaining colonel’s daughter to brave older sister. Her family spent several years in Texas and Oklahoma-- pit stops so her two sisters could be born in the States. Otherwise she spent kindergarten in Paris sampling bons bons with generals at fancy parties, followed by three years of culture shock in Morocco. Needless to say she had to grow up fast. While most kids were learning how to read, Kathleen was trying to understand what to do in a hostage situation. Dinners involved discussion over defensive driving rather than the latest episode of American Idol. Kathleen learned to adapt to any environment whether looking out a window seeing sand or a patisserie. Her childhood was spent learning with the occasional playtime with friends--as long as they were army brats themselves. Being an army brat requires no attachment issues. “I had to learn how to make friends fast. Either way, someone leaves,” Kathleen mumbles. A wall enclosed their home in Morocco, giving her and her sisters plenty of time to waste away on imaginary games playing roles from princesses to orphans.

Military life and theater turn out to be not that different, she claims. They both require structure and adaptability, not to mention creativity. Throughout her life, her father trained her on how to read people; how to tell a good witch from a bad witch. Studying body language, facial expressions, and vocal inflections not only reveals lies from truths, but also what kind of person someone is. “So why not acting?” she claims. After studying people her entire life and adapting to unusual environments, becoming a character was just another day for Kathleen. Her experience growing up in a military household became material for her future career as an actress. “I learned from my dad,” she says. During a family vacation, their flight was delayed several hours. The Colonel talked to a few people then bada bing bada boom, first class plus benefits. “It wasn’t shady or anything. He just knows how to read people, how to relate to them. He can talk about anything from football to Broadway musicals. You just have to get to know the character.”

Her best friend Daniel from her high school days in New York couldn’t agree more about the relationship between theater and military. Like Kathleen, his parents were in the military, dragging his butt from state to state, forcing him to learn where it was acceptable to say pop versus soda. Their friendship blossomed over Wicked and their different experiences around the globe. Adapting to the world around them became their coping mechanism. Instead of feeling homesick, adaptation to a new environment was like a new role in a play. Unlike Kathleen, Daniel chose a military life versus one on stage.

Her Theta sisters refer to Kathleen as being in “New York Mode” after visiting Daniel during the holidays. She loves the honesty in New York; it’s a lot like Europe and Morocco because of their bluntness. “In New York they tell you ‘what the hell are ya wearing?’” she imitates in a perfect New York accent. Europeans and Moroccans understand the importance of trust and honesty she says. Just take the Morocco example of receiving bouquets from strangers. In America we rely on this “false sense of reality. It’s important to act with honesty and truth in anything you do. That’s the key to survival,” she says playing with her braid. When Americans get to know someone we protect ourselves to hide our vulnerability. For Europeans, the wall comes tumbling down. These ideas of trust and honestly influence her process of character development. From observing human behavior throughout the world, Kathleen is able to understand how the character reacts, thinks, feels. “I would love to be on SNL. All they do is imitate others,” she says.

Kathleen also dreams of teaching theater to kids around the world. Going to a different country is like a new challenge, a new character to dive into and explore. I thrive on dragging the character out of shy people, she says. The stage makes people come alive. “Working at Disney World would be cool too. Who wouldn’t want to be a Disney princess?” she laughs. On one vacation in Disney World, she explored Epcot, talking in French to the ladies working at the bakery. They were so thrilled to have someone speaking their native tongue that Kathleen got her lunch for free, and the food at Disney world aint cheep. Even in Epcot you get to meet new and exciting people, she says.

While she eases into accents and mannerisms fluidly, when it comes down to who Kathleen Flowers is, she pauses. This role is a challenge. “It hasn’t been since this January that I started thinking about what I actually like. Who I actually am.” Kathleen leans back in the chair and says, “Let’s say you like hunting and you teach me how to hunt. Now I like hunting too.” Now Kathleen is trying to figure out what interests are unique to her.  

For Kathleen, she is most anxious when she meets a fellow army brat. Even Danny freaked her out at first because she felt she “met [her] match.” After learning how to read people, she knows that other army brats know how to as well. “That’s when I start to get nervous.” Kathleen talks about meeting her boyfriend Bradley’s parents, army brats themselves. I know how to analyze people, she says, so now I think whoa, are they analyzing me? “Can I keep up the character?” she wonders. She continues to say that her biggest challenge is putting herself into the character. Even her theater directors agree. “They knew revealing myself through the character would be my biggest challenge since day one,” she said. However, during her audition into TCU Theater, she played her character naturally and with expertise. Each role she plays in life seems to be getting one step closer to who she really is, and what she wants to become not only as an actress, but also as a citizen of the world.

Finishing up her smoothie, she notices a white patch on her pink, Theta t-shirt. “I had no idea my shirt was bleached,” she says laughing. Leaning back in her chair, she reflects upon her life, odd, as it may seem compared to most. Who knows what roles she will play in future performances on stage, but she dreams of returning to Europe one day while she is still young to experience the wild plethora of bouquets once again.