Good Kids deals with the aftermath of sexual assault in a small town.
Although men and women enter theater graduate programs in equal numbers, only 20% of professional productions nationwide have female writers or directors. In the 2013-14 season, not one new play by a woman was produced on Broadway, even though Annie Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for her off-Broadway play The Flick. Award-winning playwright Theresa Rebeck and others have noted this glass ceiling: In 1908, only 12.8% of the productions on Broadway were written by women. Some 100 years later, the needle has not budged.
The Big Ten New Play Consortium, a groundbreaking cross-country arts partnership, was recently launched to address this gap by creating more theater opportunities for women playwrights and actors on college campuses. Its debut play, Good Kids, by Naomi Iizuka, will have rolling world premieres at nine universities, including UW-Madison, where it opens in the Hemsley Theatre on Feb. 27.
"It's an incredible opportunity not only to have our students working on a new play by a nationally known female playwright, but also that we as theater educators can help address the historic lack of roles for women in theater, both on and off stage," says Patricia Boyette, director of theatre production at the UW Department of Theatre and Drama.
Good Kids differs significantly from most plays colleges produce. Iizuka is a contemporary female playwright, and Good Kids features a large cast with well-developed female roles and characters that are close in age to the college students who will play them. It also deals with the relevant subject of date rape in the age of Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Though not based on one specific case, the play's context is drawn from high-profile high school and college date rape cases in Steubenville, Ohio; Maryville, Mo.; and the University of Virginia.
In Good Kids, a high school girl from a small Midwestern town crashes a rival school's party and gets drunk. She leaves with a group of football players, and wakes up the next morning undressed and unable to remember what happened. But the young men who raped her while she was unconscious post their actions on social media. Fellow students, residents, police and the partygoers in the photos all have opinions on what happened, who is to blame and what should happen next.
In an interview with American Theater, the Toyko-born Iizuka said she wanted to write a play that "spoke to issues that were very important to university students right now. You don't solve a problem like sexual assault with anything other than a deep shift in attitude, and a deep shift in attitude happens conversation by conversation, in dorm rooms, parties and rehearsal halls."
University Theatre general manager Benjamin Young says future plays in the series will deal with other issues that are especially relevant for young people. "I know next year's show, Baltimore, will focus on race and the context of racism in humor in a college dormitory," Young says. The playwright is Kristen Greenidge.
Olivia Dawson, a professional actress, director and UW alum, directs Good Kids. "The piece is about a woman being raped, yes, but there are a plethora of other issues that arise from this piece that forced me to ask myself some hard questions that made me uncomfortable," says Dawson. "But that is what art is supposed to do: make you uneasy, make you think, and offer up more questions than answers."
Ultimately, Dawson brings her own vision to the production. "That's what makes this initiative so fascinating," says Dawson. "It's the same script, the same story, but each of the productions will be vastly different in their approach just because each director is different."
Undergraduate actors also have the opportunity to put their own stamp on the production. UW theater student Francesca Atian, who is in the play, says the roles in Good Kids are well suited for college students. "We've all had the high school experience and have endured that teenage awkwardness and tension," Atian says. "I feel like it is our duty to bring forth these issues that are being reported in the news media and discuss ways to address them."
Student actor Mackenzie Luce agrees. "It is especially important that these characters do not merely represent caricatures of mean girls, school jocks and good kids," says Luce. "Each of these characters must bare all of the intricate facets of themselves onstage that make them real people."
Although the play is set in the digital age, Dawson says she sees a connection between Good Kids and the literary classic The Scarlet Letter. "A woman is shamed for something that happened to her; the focus shifts from all other parties and rests solely on the woman; she is publicly ridiculed and becomes a pariah," says Dawson. "The only difference is that the Internet has replaced the 'A' that the woman has to wear on her chest."
University Theatre is planning opportunities for public conversations in response to the play, including post-show talkbacks and panel discussions in collaboration with End Violence on Campus, a multi-disciplinary organization devoted to ending sexual assault and dating violence on campus.
"This is such a hot-button topic on campuses right now," says Dawson. "I am interested to engage in the discussions that will certainly arise from this piece of theater."
Good Kids will be presented by the UW-Madison Department of Theatre and Drama, Feb. 27-March 8, 2015, in the Hemsley Theatre. For tickets, or more information, visit theatre.wisc.edu.
