In 2022, playwright and actor Dani Stoller ’10 was approached by Round House Theatre in Washington, D.C., to write a piece for the 21st annual Sarah Metzger Memorial Play. Stoller had undertaken commissions before and was expecting to have been given a theme or an existing work to adapt. Instead, representatives from the Round House told her what every playwright dreams of hearing: “They said what I wrote was completely up to me.”
The result was Girlhood, the story of a group of young women navigating adolescence. As an initiative of Round House’s Teen Performance Company, the play was directed, designed, stage managed, and acted entirely by area teenagers. Stoller worked side by side with Teen Performance Company to bring the one-hour play to life, culminating in a world premiere on February 17, 2023.
The play was commissioned as part of the theatre’s artistic Equal Play mission to produce plays by women and people of color. The journey to produce Girlhood had begun years ago when a friend showed Stoller a series of photographs featuring young women from all over the world. “There was something so visceral about them,” said Stoller, “And I remember my friend saying, ‘There’s a play in this.’ I put it on the back burner for years, and then this opportunity came up, and I said, ‘This is it!’”
Following its premiere, Girlhood was praised for its honest depictions of teenage life, which Stoller said comes from her desire to show young people as they are, without the pressure to appease adult audience members. “I work with teens a lot as a teaching artist, and I wanted to write something that honors the teens I work with and pays homage to my own girlhood in Brooklyn,” said Stoller. “A lot of the things we write about young girls for theatre are more about protecting the adults watching. We infantilize them. They have these brilliant minds, and they’re so thoughtful with such a strong sense of morality. I wanted to write that for them. It warmed my heart when the kids said, ‘Dani writes how kids talk.’”