This project is the culmination of my capstone, a work of documentary theater called Eldest Daughter Elegy. Half fiction, and half fact, I embarked upon interviewing eldest daughters in an effort to understand my own family, my own sisters, and the relationships I construct. While my interest was originally autobiographical, after over a year of interviewing, writing, and ultimately producing this play, the story turned into something made of a quilt of different stories, none of which are my own. It became a smorgasbord of summer camp, family complexity, and the righteous indignation and profound excitement of childhood. As I looked ahead to the production of this script, I knew that I had an intended and desired effect: to fight back against the loneliness that so many eldest daughters spoke to. Much of theater is made in a relative void, in which collaborators offer opinions, but audiences leave without sharing their opinions with the creators, instead talking amongst themselves, or not at all. With the production of Eldest Daughter Elegy, I employed a phenomenologically based follow-up approach to survey audience members, referencing moments in the script that I thought might be impactful and asking for their undiluted opinions. Through this practice, I hoped to be able to understand how my intentions “landed” on audience members, and further explore the story that was ultimately told onstage, not made up of just my goals but of the actors’ performances, work by designers, and the audience members' own minds and feelings. This presentation will track my impetus for the creation of Eldest Daughter Elegy, the process of writing/producing it, all the way to audience reception. In this way, I hope to offer an example of work created for audience members (eldest daughters) by eldest daughters, gauging what the impact really might be.