Bleachers in the Sun

Four middle-school girls, played by adults, remind us of what it meant to be eleven years old and how adulthood is perhaps less removed from the needs and desires of childhood than we may wish to acknowledge or admit. "Why would adults go to see a play about eleven-year-olds? Possibly because none of us ever really stop being eleven. Y York's new drama, BLEACHERS IN THE SUN, holds a mirror up to grown-ups to darkly illuminate the world of modern adolescent girls, which is just like ours, only amplified. Love, betrayal, sexuality, addiction - all the virtue and vices of humanity are present here - distorted through the eyes of the youth to become something at once monstrous and beautiful. The premise is deceptively simple: four middle-school girls meet behind the bleachers to engage in the secretive business of growing up. One is fat; one is smart; one is rich; one is poor. All are confused and lonely. BLEACHERS is a version of ourselves we had hoped to leave behind on the playground as maturity and experience taught us to hide behind masks of civility and social custom. Eleven-year-olds, however, hover on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, occupying a brief and rare space in which their personalities are completely developed but they are not yet expected to behave as adults ... It is both funny and frightening ... Put simply, BLEACHERS IN THE SUN is a fantastic play." -Rachel Brown, Honolulu Weekly