She also performed in children's theater as early as seven years old with the Center on Deafness in Chicago. She played "Dorothy" in The Wizard of Oz (1974), and performed in Mary Poppins and Peter Pan as the small company traveled through Illinois, Nebraska, and Indiana. At the age of thirteen, Matlin won second prize in the Chicago Center's Annual International Creative Arts Festival for an essay titled, "If I Was a Movie Star."