Something happened on Friday night, and now everyone at school is talking about it. In the UW-Madison Theatre Department's production of Good Kids, by Naomi Iizuka, it was not a schoolyard spat or youthful prank. It was rape.
Students and parents wonder if a scantily clad, inebriated girl who consents to go home with a car full of football players is "asking" to be sexually assaulted and humiliated when her attackers post videos of the abuse on social media. The play exposes the status quo response: The majority of the characters do nothing to stop the abuse, punish the perpetrators or aid the victim.
Director Olivia Dawson uses the full theater space to illustrate the cliques of high school, the intersection of social groups and outcasts and the suffocating presence of internet viewers. James Wagoner's affecting sound design incorporates the clicks of smartphone cameras, automated messages and the echoes of eerie laughter interspersed with upbeat rock anthems.
This play was commissioned by the Big Ten Theater Consortium, which aspires to provide more writing opportunities and complex roles for college-aged women. The roles for women were nontraditional, but disappointingly one-dimensional. The archetypes of mean girls, jocks, nerdy social outcasts and silly newcomers desperate to fit in were significantly less nuanced than those found in an episode of Dawson's Creek. Even the part of Chloe, the assault victim (Isabel Cuddihy), was written with so little depth it was hard to invest in her story. Many of their lines sounded like snippets from an after-school special or poorly written public service announcement.
The males also failed to escape well-worn clichés. The hometown hero football stars watch porn, deal drugs, verbally harass the cheerleaders and regard the assault as a big joke, until the police get involved, threatening the quarterback's college scholarship. Fortunately, the sensitive one, in love with the nerdy girl with purple striped hair, remembers too late that what his teammates did was not only illegal but immoral.
An additional narrator, Deirdre (played confidently by Kate Mann), reinforces the tragedy of the events, modeled after the rape case in Steubenville, Ohio. Deirdre's tragic back story is unfortunately tacked on to the end of the play, resulting in a strange shift of focus. Despite the flaws in the script, the ensemble members performed well, notably Meghan Hofschulte (Skyler) and Francesca Atian (Brianna). Yasmine Traore (Daphne) spoke passionately as the victim's best friend, and A. Christian Inouye (Tanner) was exceptional as one of the only emotionally conflicted characters in the play. Football players Ethan Larsen and Michael Costanzo also did well with the material they were given.
Good Kids brings an important issue into a public forum. But sadly, it misses the opportunity to contribute to the conversation in a more meaningful way.
Good Kids runs through March 8 at the UW Vilas Hall-Hemsley Theatre, with informal talkbacks following all the shows. On March 5, Ending Violence on Campus (EVOC) will conduct an event called Know Your Rights in the Hemsley from 5 to 6:30 pm.