Why This Play, Now?
The current generation of college students and young adults grew up with portrayals of teenage girls in film and television that could often be stereotypical or superficial. This play, however, portrays these young women as complex and individual human beings with agency in their own lives. The script empowers young women without talking down to or diminishing them. Their relationships, conversations, and passions are accurately depicted as being multifaceted rather than simple stereotypes. Adolescent girls are often capable of more than society gives them credit for; they can discuss the atrocities of genocide in the same conversation that they debate menstrual products. The girls on the team are strong, active, and complex rather than submissive, objectified or passive, which can be refreshing to audiences. This depiction builds off of the recent movement to empower young women and girls in areas from which they have typically been excluded, including sports, leadership, science, technology, engineering, and math fields.
Themes
Identity Formation
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Our identities, especially as teenagers, are formed by the people around us and the experiences that we share together. |
Growing Up
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Growing up is hard. Navigating the space between childhood and adulthood can be awkward and challenging. There is a simultaneous desire to look towards the future while also holding on to the past. Growing up with the same group of people can be both comforting and stifling.
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Teamwork
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Forming strong, lasting connections with other people is important. The girls rely on each other, and those bonds are what are getting them through the challenges of adolescence. They make mistakes, they hurt each other, but they can still lean on each other for support.
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Pressure
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Teenage girls are under a great deal of pressure. Although they may perceive some pressures to be greater than they really are, the external and internal pressures faced by teenagers, including the pressure to perform well on the field, prepare for college, do well in school, and fit in socially, can be overwhelmingly stressful.
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Structure
- The unique structure of the script contributes to the themes and audience's understanding of the play.
- The action is laid out over a period of several weeks; each scene is a new week and a new game for the team. This passage of time allows the audience to see the characters change from week to week. We see them evolving and growing up more clearly than if all of the action occurred within a shorter span of time.
- Rather than following a specific character as a protagonist, the protagonist is the team itself. Each character's individuality is explored as well as how they each fit into the structure of the team, allowing for a deeper examination of both teamwork and individualism. #46 acts as a stand-in for the audience as we try to understand the social dynamics of the team at the beginning and then become part of it by the end.
- The play has a realistic structure. The scenes lack a traditional dramatic arc, but life also lacks a traditional dramatic arc, adding to the realism. The writing reflects natural speech patterns; the characters speak over each other, lines are layered over one another, the characters use filler words such as "like and "um", and there is no capitalization or punctuation in the written text. It accurately reflects the conversational patterns of teenage girls, bringing an added level of truth for the audience and reinforcing the fact that these girls could have easily been the girls we knew in high school.