I have been waiting for this Saturday to come for a loooooong time, it's our first CHEERLEADERS VS. ALIENS rehearsal!! I can't wait to jump in with my amazing director, Alicia Washington, and my killer cast, on this script that is so near and dear to my heart. I know on the surface it sounds like a fun and silly play, and it absolutely is, but there's more to it than that, and I can't wait to share it with the world.
Be sure to get your CHEERLEADERS VS. ALIENS Egyptian Youtheatre World Premiere Production Tickets asap!
The show runs:
- Thursday May 10th at 7pm
- Friday May 11th at 7pm
- Saturday May 12th at 2pm and 7pm
And if you'd like to hear more about why I feel like this play is so important now, check out my artistic statement (which you can also find on the Egyptian Youtheatre “Our Next Show” page):
"When I decided to write a play designed to be produced at high schools I thought back to my days in a high school drama department. What did high school Rachel want out of a play? The one major thing glared back at me in pulsing neon lights: MORE PARTS FOR LADIES! Coming with a background in acting I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to pore through play you plan on auditioning for only to discover how few characters in the play are written for females. More often than not we’re stuck only with the love interest, the mother, or the maid. What’s even more frustrating about this phenomenon is that if you visit the vast majority of any drama department or theater scene, you’ll find it disproportionately filled with women and girls. So right off the bat I knew that my cast would be majority female, or gender nonspecific.
"Deeper than that though, I wanted to have an assortment of roles that defied what we typically see available for girls; I wanted every single one of them to be smart, I wanted my characters to have agency, I wanted my characters to be funny, to be caring, to be tough, and to be resourceful. I did not want to include “catfights” or any storylines where girls fought over some dude. In short, I wanted to create characters that girls rarely get a chance to play. And I wanted a whole lot of them. This was the birth of CHEERLEADERS VS. ALIENS. A play that answered my years of seeing all the great roles that weren’t meant for me to play.
”CHEERLEADERS VS. ALIENS is fun, silly, and filled with glitter, and it doesn’t hold back in the girl power department either. It’s my hope to create characters that show my audience that girls are up to any challenge we throw at them, they only need to be given the chance. And also, to show any of the actors stepping into this play, that they can, like me, fix the wrongs they see in the world, because if you don’t like the characters available to you, you have the power to write some characters of your own.”
Happy Thursday everyone!