Performing Girlhood

By Rachael Powles '22, August 7, 2023

Dani Stoller ’10 opens new play in D.C., credits professors for supporting her career.

Dani Stoller '10 (center) opened her new play, Girlhood, last February in Bethesda, Maryland.

(Photo submitted)

In 2022, playwright and actor Dani Stoller ’10 was approached to write a piece for the 21st Annual Sarah Metzger Memorial Play. Stoller had undertaken commissions before, and she was expecting to be given a theme or an existing work to adapt. Instead, Round House Theatre said the words that 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 from their hideaway beneath an abandoned overpass. As an initiative of Round House’s Teen Performance Company, located in Bethesda, Maryland, the play was directed, designed, stage managed and acted entirely by area teenagers. Stoller worked side by side with the 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.

Stoller credited several Ithaca College professors with supporting her growth as an artist. (Photo submitted)

The journey to create 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 [the teens]. 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.’”

Writing has always been a part of Stoller’s life. As a senior at Ithaca College pursuing her B.F.A in acting, she and a friend from home formed their own theatre company so they could produce their own work. That year, she wrote her first full-length play and showed it to one of her teachers in the theatre department, Arno Selco. He encouraged her to keep writing, as did fellow faculty members Cynthia Henderson and Norm Johnson.

“I was so lucky to have incredible teachers at Ithaca,” said Stoller. “Cynthia was someone who had such a strong impact on me. I came into school kind of afraid and self-conscious, and she helped me realize my power. One of the things I’ve been told as an actor is that I’m fearless, and that’s because of Norm.”

“A lot of the things we write about young girls for theatre are more about protecting the adults watching. We infantilize [the teens]. They have these brilliant minds, and they’re so thoughtful with such a strong sense of morality. I wanted to write that for them.”

Dani Stoller 10

After graduation, Stoller moved to Washington, D.C., and began her acting career, continuing to write plays along the way. In 2015, she and her friends decided to hold a public reading of her play Accepts With Pleasure. They found a rehearsal studio at the Signature Theatre and invited as many people as they could, paying for everything out of pocket.

Among those invited guests was Matthew Gardiner, who was then the associate director of the Signature Theatre Company. He passed Stoller’s script on to Joe Calarco ’92, another IC alum who was directing the inaugural season of SigWorks, the company’s new play development initiative. Calarco invited Stoller to be a part of the event, and an ongoing relationship with Signature Theatre was born.

“I hate the idea of things being in alignment,” Stoller said. “But with this, it really was.”

Stoller continues to act in the D.C. theatre scene and was recently nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for her acting work at Arena Stage. She is also completing her M.F.A. in Playwriting at Catholic University. Stoller proudly identifies as a “multi-hyphenate” theatre artist and is a strong proponent of pursuing multiple artistic passions at once. For her, Girlhood is just the latest project of a career dedicated to trying anything.

“My mother always said, ‘No matter what you do, don’t stop writing,’” said Stoller. “If you’re going to do this, just do it.”