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My representation of the Yale Rep production of "Girls" in a nutshell. Hemmed in by nature, these characters transcend gendered boundaries and try on nature for themselves. The "girls" also explore their own sexualities in this liminal space outside of normal time, egged on by the hypnotizing beat that Deon amplifies.

The audience surveils the "girls" as they morph into more animalistic and exploratory versions of themselves, looking through the lens of history as BJJ bends the lens to encapsulate this timely story. The "girls" stare right back, enacting an oppositional gaze - one that allows reclamation of historic oppression - in their transgressive genderfuckery and time-bending (Hobson and Halberstam).

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This piece speaks to the inner and outer animals and the duality that Dionysus brings out in his followers. As a god of celebration, he brings a liminal celebration into everyday working people's daily lives, letting them let loose from their menial jobs and fully live. I represented this by mismatching halves of famous couples in art -- this representation also gets at how Theseus (Theo) is more alike to Dionysus (Deon) than he would like to think. When Deon convices Theo to crossdress, he exists between his (conservative-informed) binary conceptions of gender and actually enjoys the freedom that Deon gives him.

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"Many of Jacobs-Jenkins’s plays use a historical lens to satirize and comment on modern culture, particularly the ways in which race and class are negotiated in both private and public settings. Although the provocation of his audience is purposeful, Jacobs-Jenkins’s creation of unsettling, shocking, often confrontational moments... [are in] service of the story he is telling." (Macfound)

In Girls, the phrase "Trigger Warning" was inserted in a line rather than in the program, which I found a creative solution to the TW debate.

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As a Queer and Black playwright, Jenkins has spoken about the pressure to always speak to his “otherness” in his work - often commenting about how, sometimes a cow is just a cow rather than a complicated allegory for American racism and/or homophobia.

In a New York Magazine article from 2014, he expresses:

"He seems unable to escape... the expectation that he write solely about race. 'Race is always in play, but somehow when I walk into a room, it’s a word that’s used to put me in a corner.'" (Witchel).

In Girls, he presents diverse characters with intersectional racial, gender, and sexual identities to create a fuller picture of modern "girls"  who may come but avoids bringing his subjectivity directly into the piece.

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What does it mean when marginalized groups purposefully change the story created by oppressors?

Does constructing a queer self unapologetically in a hetero-patriarchal society (both in public and private) and operating within Queer Temporality act as resistance?

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Appropriate (2012) has all of the trappings of an “American family drama,” but the familiar plot of a family brought together after a father’s death is disrupted by the discovery of a collection of lynching photographs among the deceased’s belongings.

Neighbors (2010) includes performances reminiscent of historical minstrel acts performed by actors in blackface.

An Octoroon (2014) with the meta-theatrical character of BJJ. BJJ is a playwright alter ego who guides the action of this imaginative recreation of Dion Boucicault’s nineteenth-century play of a similar name. Another Adaptation

With Gloria (2015), Jacobs-Jenkins returns to the naturalistic play, using the biting satire of the comic drama to explore the stratified, competitive world of the modern workplace and its sometimes fatal consequences.
(Macfound.org)

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Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins | 2016 MacArthur Fellow

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Artificiality of technology replacing nature. The intermedial elements of this play centralize on how the natural world has changed -- and uses the setting of the Bacchus celebration, in the middle of the woods, to satirically frame this. Jenkins presents the dramatic wood setting as bizarre, commenting how our internet-informed worlds have shifted, makings screens seem more natural than nature itself.  He also brings in the issue of capitalistic consumerism as natural in how many of the "girls" own frilly clothes that do not match their setting, apply and reapply heavy makeup, and attempt to document their experience with their expensive phones. Where are these characters' animalistic qualities if nature has been replaced by screens and the communal celebration replaced by electronic dance music?

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Queer and Natural Time. Against an unatural natural backdrop, this play explores Queer time by boiling down the Bacchus celebration into a one-night rave that seems to last for an eternity. The squares on the right represent the multiplicity of the monologuing "girls" and their intersectional experiences - as we hear their stories we find they are more alike than we originally thought.

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Girls invokes ideas of Camp, especially through a Queer lens, which is explored in this video.

BJJ similarly dethrones the serious in Girls by satirically questioning the seriousness of this Greek tragedy.

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new video loaded: What Is Camp (Now) ?

transcript

What Is Camp (Now) ?

The theme for this year's Met Gala is "Camp: Notes on Fashion." So what, exactly, does that mean? Six experts attempt to define a largely indefinable sensibility.

"Camp today. Oh, Jesus." "Camp now." "Camp now." "Camp now -" "As opposed to before?" "I have no idea." "Because of the Met show, it's like everyone's talking about, what is this definition of camp?" "It's difficult to discuss camp in a very serious way, because it's basically antiserious." "How do I define camp? Boy." "Exaggerating something to the point of absurdity. It's a form of humor associated with gay people, but not exclusively." "I don't think Susan Sontag knew what camp was either. A Tiffany lamp is not camp. At that price, nothing's camp." [laughs] "You know, it's not like kitsch. It's a different thing, say, like, a John Waters film. Divine is camp. But I think of John Waters and the film as being, sort of, kitsch. I think!" "It seems like camp, today, is not so based on white, gay male cultural references." "So someone who gives me that camp vibe is Solange Knowles. Love." "Liz Lemon is female camp. For me, it's better than Mae West." "Jack Smith, Split Britches, Holly Hughes and The Five Lesbian Brothers." "I mean, camp hero Carmelita Tropicana." "Yes. It is me." "Faye Dunaway! It's that moment when she goes cross-eyed that just totally takes it into the realm of camp." "The movie 'Valley of the Dolls,' everyone says, was camp. I thought it was just bad. Bad and camp aren't the same thing." "We know, like, RuPaul's camp. Divine is camp. But in our culture, like, things like Kardashians -" "Just about anything can be camp anymore, it seems. And that's - what's special about that?" "Gay culture has penetrated mainstream culture, and that means that it will be very hard to separate out camp from the mainstream." "You know, we're just in a time of such artifice that it's like camp is all around us." "Camp is forever evolving." "Camp, today, is whatever was outrageous in 2009." "And it's many other things to other people. But to me, existentially, I am camp. But maybe other people would not claim it as such. And that's O.K. Yeah?" "You nailed it, girl." "O.K."

Site Information Navigation

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new video loaded: What Is Camp (Now) ? transcript The theme for this year's Met Gala is "Camp: Notes on Fashion." So what, exactly, does that mean? Six experts attempt to define a largely indefinable sensibility. "Camp today. Oh, Jesus." "Camp now." "Camp now." "Camp now -" "As opposed to before?"

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Freccero’s essay on “Cultural Studies, Popular Culture and Pedagogy” paper discusses how marginalized groups’ limited ability to produce counter-hegemonic representations supports that if there were more (in this case Black and gender-Queer) representations  to choose from, then “bad” representations wouldn’t hurt marginalized communities so terribly by contributing to mass cultural misconceptions.

What does it mean for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, "who identif[ies] as queer but whose plays aren’t chiefly about LGBTQ life" to engage in topics of genderfuck and provide authentic and variant intersectional character representations? (Black, Queer and Here, American Theatre).

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Blurb in my own words: Deon doesn't fit in with productive society so creates raving chaos in the woods, luring the town's "girls" of all genders to party. Theo/Theseus finds the partying revolting and rants about the merry-makers in his alt-right-pro-gun vlogs. This play pits law & order against freedom & acceptance in a modern take on Euripides' The Bacchae.
Press Release

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My perception of this show borders on Sack's review of Castelluci's Hey, Girl (RCP 75).

This play similarly "simultaneously profane the sacred and elevate the banal," (RCP 75) by invoking duality and camp. As shown below, Hey. Girl operates on the edge of consciousness and creates bold images that question large themes such as moldable identity; Girls also points to questions of identity with its title community of all-gendered "girls" and explores femme-identifying corporeality.

Girls also similarly "implicates the theatre and spectator" (76) that Castelluci creates by merging the play's and the audience's reality. I especially noticed this conflation in the ending gunshots, which I've expanded on in the My Experience section.

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Deon, or Dionysus, is everywhere in this play. They (the pronouns I'm using) exist beyond nature -- both as a part of the natural landscape and on the projected screen. Deon is the only character who exists comfortably in both worlds, which brings in a Queer reading of his ability to pass across genders. Criticism of the older play offers:

"In this protodrama, Dionysus, the god of the theatre, stage-directs the play" (Gutenberg).

in BJJ's adaptation, Deon exists across both spheres and more orchestrates and sways rather than directs, in my opinion, as the two worlds collide.

"The original “Bacchae” opens with a stark announcement from Dionysus, god of pleasure, that’s he’s arrived and needs to be obeyed. “Girls” begins with a slight, unassuming (yet stylish) young man named Deon wandering out in the lush city park setting, glancing out to the audience and muttering 'You’re here early. I thought you were someone else. Do you mind if I ...?'" (NYT Review).

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Regional News Girls Will Be All-New Spin on The Bacchae- With Live DJ, Dance Music, and Video

The adaptation will kick off Yale Rep's 2019-2020 season, also featuring new plays by Will Eno, Mary Kathryn Nagle, and Kate Atwell.

An Octoroon and Everybody playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is putting a contemporary spin on Euripides' Greek tragedy The Bacchae-the story of Dionysus' raucous and blood-filled return to Thebes-complete with a killer DJ, bumping dance music, and live-streaming video. The new adaptation, titled Girls, will receive its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre this fall.

The newly announced season will also include new plays by Will Eno, Mary Kathryn Nagle, and Kate Atwell, as well as a revival of A Raisin in the Sun.

Girls, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz (who directed Jacobs-Jenkins' play WAR at LCT3) and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly (who also worked on Madeleine George's Dionysus-inspired comedy, Hurricane Diane), will play October 4-26 at Yale Rep.

The story follows the return of Deon, who, having been exiled to boarding schools his entire life, returns to his birthplace with a vengeance. As he lures the women of the town to the woods for a night of partying, a young reactionary with a big social media following vows to restore order and end the debauchery.

Next up will be the world premiere of The Plot, which reunites playwright Eno with director Oliver Butler (the two collaborated on Thom Pain (based on nothing) at the Signature). The new play, which will run November 29-December 21, tells the moving, mysterious, and at times hilarious story of a tiny plot of land and some people with grand and incompatible designs on it.

Yale Rep will kick off the new year with the East Coast premiere of Nagle's Manahatta, directed by Laurie Woolery. Past and present intertwine in the new play about a Native American woman working as a securities trader on Wall Street in 2008. As a looming mortgage crisis threatens financial ruin for millions of families-including her own-Jane is caught between her present and the history of how the Lenape were violently removed from the land 400 hundred years before. Performances will run January 24-February 15, 2020.

From March 13 through April 4, Yale Rep will revive Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking drama, A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Carl Cofield, followed by a spring production of Testmatch by Kate Attwell.

Featuring an all-female cast, Testmatch weaves a tale of sport, gender politics, and colonialism. In London today, a rain-delayed women's cricket match between India and England leaves tensions bare. While in Calcutta, near the turn of the 19th century, two British imperialists debate the rules of engagement, the problem of women, and the trouble with mosquitoes, as famine ravages East India. Margot Bordelon ( Do You Feel Anger?) directs the April 24-May 16 run.

"Our 2019-20 Season promises delicious comedy, political intrigue, heartbreak, hope, stirring music, thrilling dance, bold design, phenomenal acting, and plenty of impassioned conversation on the way home," says Yale Rep Artistic Director James Bundy. Click here for more information.

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Girls Will Be All-New Spin on The Bacchae-With Live DJ, Dance Music, and Video | Playbill

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Regional News Girls Will Be All-New Spin on The Bacchae- With Live DJ, Dance Music, and Video The adaptation will kick off Yale Rep's 2019-2020 season, also featuring new plays by Will Eno, Mary Kathryn Nagle, and Kate Atwell.

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Female Sexual Agency as Natural and Queer time as warped.
This play allows the Bacchae, or female followers, to express themselves through sexual choreography in a celebration that escapes typical surveillance of female sexuality, although the audience watches on. It also encourages viewers to let go of linear time as they know it and refocus on living in the moment and existing authentically rather than mechanically.

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BJJ show the bits of “The Bacchae” that Euripides only talked about.

"Staging the party makes it a play about women (and transwomen, and the gender-fluid folks) rather than about egotistical, argumentative men" (NYT Review).

What Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Changed:
- Setting: Bacchus as a rave in the woods
- Theseus as Theo (gun activist) and Dionysus as Deon (amateur DJ)
- Changing what it means to be Bacchan women: partying outside of working hours rather than going "mad" and murderous.
-Bringing intermediality to the story.

Below is the Yale Rep Production Dramaturgy Note.

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J. Halberstam's idea of Queer Time in "Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies" favors the immediate present and upends value of reproductive and hetero-patriarchally motivated time. By structuring the dramatic setting as a place of liminal and unproductive time, the rave becomes anti-capitalist and pro-Queer, letting the participants forget their routine worries. BJJ encompasses this concept in his adaptation by focusing on the "urgent now" and a community that values spontaneity over routine. The below installation breaches this topic in a similarly intermedial way.

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Queering Temporality is a video triptych on the topic of queerness in the context of the artist’s perceived Past, Present, and Future. The installation is made up of three vertically-placed monitors that simultaneously play found and self-recorded footage with reference to LGBTQ+ history, personal memories, and speculative world-building. The three screens are synchronized in a constant loop, paralleling one another in theme or topic, with audio clips of the scenes overlapping to form a convoluted and fused tone. Occasionally scenes of the Past seep into the Future and vice versa, demonstrating the “queering” of a linear understanding of space and time.

The Past section of the screening is largely based on U.S. history from the 1960’s to the 80’s, shedding light on the overlooked figures that ceaselessly fought for the scarce LGBTQ+ rights that exist today. Figures include Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, both who were trans women of color fighting for the safety and civil rights of the gay community, despite the movement’s exclusion of trans individuals or people of color. Due to the leadership and sacrifices made by these figures during the Stonewall Riots, scenes of demonstrations and early Pride Parades are prominent in the Past documentations. Additionally, the riots and protests against the government inaction during the AIDS crisis are highlighted to pay homage to those who fought for human rights and paved the way for future generations.

The Present section is a more personal and ambiguous interpretation of living queerly in the current day. It is more specific to the artist’s perspective of the nuances of queer identity and performance, occasionally overlapping with its relation to her cultural roots. Scenes of the Present are notably mundane in tone in relation to the other screens, specifically because it is the only one that poses a pure “reality” to the artist herself; the Future is an imagined speculation of queerness, and the Past is but a limited and idealized view that is gathered from these archived fragments of an extensive history.

Lastly, the Future panel displays a speculative, hopeful future in opposition to an often disheartening reality where queer individuals around the world have faced and will continue to face discrimination and violent hate crimes. This section references notions of queer futurity that fulfill the necessity of world-building and queer utopianism as a form of escapism from the suffocating present. The artist contributes her own renditions of queer futurism by interweaving cultural references to gender fluidity, in one instance taking Japanese futurism into her own hands and reshaping traditional kabuki makeup into a contemporary expression of queerness. The intent of the Future is to provide an optimistic image of a world that is liberated from all discrimination of sexual orientations and gender expressions.

Special thanks to 
Grace Kim Howard,
Gelare Khoshgozaran,
Sarah Rara,
Jack Turpin,
and Sam Congdon.



Online Found Footage Sources:

Gay Pride in 70s (A Very Natural Thing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiF7FIz0f5k

Lesbian Avengers Kick Off the First Dyke March Ever, April 24, 1993
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6K768KKbQ

Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire Too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4o0tZPETAc

VITO RUSSO Speech excerpt Albany, New York May 9, 1988 (5:04)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i72VF3ir1KA

United in Anger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrAzU79PBVM

30 in 30: Slyvia Rivera
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nCMAdEjebw

Pay It No Mind - The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjN9W2KstqE

Scenes from New York Gay Pride 1983
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MpWRps6OEo

NYC, night-gay-club, Ritz and Launge Bar, USA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weozUmFgBuE

たまさぶろ 歌舞伎の化粧 上
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zHCMOGleWs

Kabuki Theatre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67-bgSFJiKc

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From Euripide's largely ignored Bacchan women to "Gurls" and now "Girls," BJJ seems to be calling attention to the term "girls" itself and its political undercurrents.

BJJ centers his piece on "girls" from all gender identities to allow for playful genderfuckery and existence outside of a gender binary. He also brings into question the universal underestimation and infantilization of women - particularly in the term "girl" rather than "woman".

I believe he uses this term in a parodic and delightfully centering way by creating a chorus of women of all identities who are lumped together as the "girls" collective. By switching from Gurls to Girls, he allows for a more universal understanding of "girls" rather than sticking to the more casual term "gurls" for girls to match the slang "clurb"/club.

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There are many offensive words you can use for a female but they are often confined to, ahem, "bitchy" conversations or private emails among football executives. The word "girl" is different. The question of where we stand on it, and when and to whom we apply it, seems undecided.

This week the BBC removed the word from a documentary and was promptly accused of censorship. In the documentary, The Queen's Baton Relay, broadcaster Mark Beaumont was seemingly surprised at being floored by judo champion Cynthia Rahming - perhaps unaware that someone becomes a champion at judo by being rather good at it. The first time the documentary was aired he said: "I am not sure I can live that down - being beaten by a 19-year-old girl." But when the programme was repeated, the word "girl" had been removed.

Whether you find the word "girl" offensive or not depends, as ever, on context. Is it being said by a man or a woman? What is the age of the female being called a girl? And what is the intention behind the use - is it belittling, affectionate, or purely descriptive?

One of the key objections to the word, of course, is that it is infantilising when used to describe a grown woman - but the age at which a girl is thought to become a woman is highly variable. Internationally you are defined as a child until the age of 18, but you are able to do various adult things before that age in this country, and at 19, like Rahming, you're still a teenager, and so arguably still in your girlhood.

Girl is also, surprisingly, a term that women seem to use more to describe themselves, and their friends, the older they get - perhaps irony and affection for the word increase with age. Women may spend their twenties and early thirties fighting for respect and recognition and demanding not to be called "girl", only to embrace it later on when "lady" starts sounding like an awful euphemism.

While recognising that "girl" can have negative connotations when used to describe a woman, we don't want to compound those connotations by recoiling at its use. Demanding not to be referred to as a girl confirms that it is an undesirable thing to be, that it is associated with weakness or silliness or irrelevance. The fact that it is used as a threat to boys to encourage certain masculinised behaviour - "You can't have a dolly, they're for girls" - shows them that boys are not only different but better. The "girl power" espoused by the Spice Girls gained currency because it was a novel concept.

When people are criticised for "throwing like a girl", "crying like a girl" or "being a big girl's blouse", it implies that there is nothing as rubbish or weak as a girl, or quite as surprising as them being a champion. Beaumont was making a joke about being beaten in a combat sport by not just a female, but a young female. Maybe he shouldn't have felt emasculated by being beaten by a judo champion who is clearly better at her sport than almost anyone else in the country, regardless of age and genitalia.

"Girl" isn't sexist every single time it's used, but when it is used day-in, day-out to signify that the female of the species is somehow lacking, and that the worst thing that could happen to a man or boy - to any of us in fact - is to be like a girl, then it does have an effect. Beaumont needs to listen to more Iggy Pop, who once said: "I'm not ashamed to dress like a woman because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman." It's not more shameful to be beaten by a girl than by a boy - especially when she's a black belt.
Topics

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Is the word 'girl' offensive? | Naomi McAuliffe

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There are many offensive words you can use for a female but they are often confined to, ahem, "bitchy" conversations or private emails among football executives. The word "girl" is different. The question of where we stand on it, and when and to whom we apply it, seems undecided.

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Some themes stick across time and space -- this adaptation capitalizes on Euripide's original focus of the believer's "clouded judgement" and brings it into the 21st century by pitting individuals who stand for alt-right Law & Order and Free-thinking Protestors against each other, threatening to topple society as we know it. We watch on (as the audience below) as the story unfolds, plucked from Ancient Greece and brought into America to represent a political Bacchus that is incredibly close to home.

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Commissioned and developed at for Playwright-in-Residence Program at Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts.
Princeton 2017 - Workshop
Yale Rep 2019 - World Premiere (I saw in October, 2019).

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Yale Rep Artistic Director Note about "Girls"

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Yale Rep Artistic Director Note about "Girls"

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Director speaks to how Jenkins has adapted Euripides The Bacchae for his modern audience.

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This play inspires us to see the "girls"/ravers as enlightened and Theo, the alt-right gun enthusiast, as animalistic due to his penchant for violence. However, this play blends the lines by opening conversations across the separated worlds.

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More Helpful Notes from Program at Yale Rep

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More Helpful Notes from Program at Yale Rep

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From Yale Rep Program

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Holding the hand of a stranger next to me during the machine gun fire at the end.

I sat next to a fellow college student -- we chatted for a couple minutes pre-show but were otherwise strangers. After the Bacchan women ripped Theo apart, we thought we were safe and that was the violence the trigger warning was referring to.

Until a barrage of machine gun fire had us clasping hands and curling into each other. This sort of fear melded the real world and world of the play so seamlessly, but was so incredibly shocking that we were almost crying because we thought it was a live shooter. We were reminded of active shooters in movie theatres and schools; our collective recent memories of gun violence blended to make this ending believable and terrifying. We breathed a sigh of relief with quickly beating hearts and parted ways.

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Gender Queerness and Butlerian Performativity

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Gender Queerness and Butlerian Performativity

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"Girls" are also male-presenting and use a variety of pronouns. The revelers play with aspects of Butler's gender performativity by changing their outfits  - stripping off and adding accessories throughout - performing gendered acts.

Butler states, “those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished” (522) - instead of only trying one performance, the "girls" experiment and expand their ideas of gender by trying differently gendered performances.

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Intermediality - Use of Screens and Vlogging

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Intermediality - Use of Screens and Vlogging

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The use of actual phones, selfies, cameras and screens reflected our world in a dizzying way. As the RCP includes, intermediality allows for a "'between-ness' and undecideability" (217) that reflects the playfulness of how BJJ explores gender and time.

In utilizing intermedial influences throughout the choreography (such as phones to take videos and selfie throughout), Kelly allows for both a bodily and virtual corporeality, contributing to the play's duality.

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BJJ replaces antiquated characters (especially in how Euripides represents the women as "crazy") with intersectional representations of "girls". He bends expectations and frames the story in a self-representative way, focusing on BIPOC and Queer narratives to rewrite this Greek tragedy with current subjects. He updates the Greek drama to highlight explicitly 21st Century struggles and binary oppositions by Queering and modernizing his text. The embroidery that goes outside of the frame represents how BJJ picked and chose what he decided to adapt from Euripide's original text.

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The intermedial choice to live stream scenes between Deon and Theo as they were happening onto a screen effectively blends the natural and modern world. By putting this live video in the trees at a god-like height, BJJ exemplifies limitless possibilities of what theatre can be. In showing present action that we can't see in real time on screens, the audience gains access to a supposedly private behind-the-scenes conversation.

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"Group mentality" takes on different meaning in Girls, allowing for under-represented solidarity.

The Choreography weaves all of the "girls"' stories together into a collective mishmash and communal celebration, "showcas[ing] the women cavorting in groups large and small” (Beck BWW).

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins received a B.A. (2006) from Princeton University and an M.A. (2007) from New York University, and he is a graduate (2014) of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard. His plays have been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3, Soho Rep, the Public Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, and Center Theatre Group, among many others. Jacobs-Jenkins is currently a Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and master-artist-in-residence in the Playwriting MFA program of Hunter College, City University of New York. (MacArthur Foundation)

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was listed among the Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of 2018-2019 and has been honored as a two-time finalist for the 2016 and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, respectively. (American Theatre).

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Gun Violence: Perpetuating or Protesting?

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Gun Violence: Perpetuating or Protesting?

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Casting Deon as a Black actor and Theo as a white actor brings racialized weight into this adaptation, especially in regards to gun violence.

White men such as Theo have always been the perpetrators and Black individuals have always been the victims in America history.

This show did precede summer 2020 (mainstream) calls for abolishing the prison industrial complex, defunding the police and the term "ACAB," but it is prompting me to view this play differently.

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This play centers around the Bacchan reveling of the "girls" that were under-represented in Euripide's play. To emphasize the raving atmosphere and refocus on the corporeality of the "girls," BJJ privileges choreography as an important element of his story telling.

"This play lulls you into a dance trance... Kelly’s choreography is artfully and specifically frenetic throughout. It reaches a delirious high point when each of the performers does a solo turn" (NY Times Review).

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The "girls" become animals, in the bestial and/or party animal sense. They group together in packs, lounge on grass in the dead of night, and get down on all fours. While raving, this all-encompassing group reaches a raw collective self. This play brings the inside out for the audience to see, and has humans turn into a community of dancing animals. They become an iteration of "the electric animal" that Chaudari writes about in RCP 181.

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Focusing in on individual unseen representations (BIPOC/WOMEN)

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Focusing in on individual unseen representations (BIPOC/WOMEN)

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There is power in presenting each "girl" in the spotlight, especially due to their diverse casting. This play centers under-represented demographics by co-opting greek myths for their own modern lives -- bringing this Greek tragedy into a modern sphere.

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Creation of Atmosphere Through Lighting & Sound

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Creation of Atmosphere Through Lighting & Sound

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The atmosphere of Girls was like no other. Otherworldly and spanning both historical and virtual time, I felt in another dimension of consciousness.

"Yi Zhao’s hallucinatory, audience-drenching lighting creates the visual equivalent of the electronic dance music that numbs even as it energizes." (NY Times Review)

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Thank you for a wonderful semester! See you in the Spring :)