others in the neighborhood for her voice. With the other kids she remembers sitting on the stoop in front of their apartment building and singing: "I was considered the girl on the block with the good voice." That talent became a way for her to gain attention. She would often practice her singing in the hallway of her apartment building which gave her voice an echoing quality. She made her singing debut at a PTA assembly, where she became a hit to everyone but her mother, who was mostly critical of her daughter. Streisand was invited to sing at weddings and summer camp, along with having an unsuccessful audition at MGM records when she was nine. By the time she was 13, her mother began supporting her talent, helping her make a four-song demo tape, including "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart", and "You'll Never Know". Becoming an actress was her main objective. That desire was made stronger when she saw her first Broadway play, The Diary of Anne Frank when she was 14. The star in the play was Susan Strasberg, whose acting she wanted to emulate. Streisand began spending her spare time in the library, studying the biographies of various stage actresses such as Eleanora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt. In addition, she began reading novels and plays and studying the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavski and Michael Chekhov. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1956, where she became an honor student in modern history, English, and Spanish. She also joined the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, where she sang with another choir member and classmate, Neil Diamond. Diamond recalls, "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes." The school was near an art-movie house, and he recalls that she was always aware of the films they were showing. She had a crush on 15-year-old US Chess Champion and fellow student Bobby Fischer, whom she found to be "very sexy". During the summer of 1957, she got her first stage experience as a walk-on at the Playhouse in Malden Bridge, New York. That small part was followed by a role as the kid sister in Picnic and one as a vamp in Desk Set. In her second year, she took a night job at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village helping backstage. When