Ridgefield’s Thrown Stone ‘girl power’ plays spotlight women in sports

“It was just a revelation because we were imagining that the girls in ‘Athena’ could also play roles in ‘Hysterical!’ and that’s a first time for us. We have done rep before but we have never done true rep where the actors are in both shows,” said Thrown Stone co-artistic director Jonathan Winn.

The theme developed after Thrown Stone’s co-artistic director Jason Peck found “Athena," which tells the story of two young women, both 17, who are fencers training for the Junior Olympics. They practice together and are fierce competitors, coexisting in this key period of their lives but are more frenemies than friends.

Peck and Winn decided they wanted a similarly female-centric play as a companion piece. In 2021, they deputized their interns, Ridgefield High School students Evelyn Carr and Liam Huff, to access the National New Play Network and read one play a day, using a custom metrics system Thrown Stone developed to evaluate worthy plays. Like cream in milk, “Hysterical!” rose to the top and was one of Carr’s reads.

“I stumbled across ‘Hysterical!’ while searching for female-centered plays, particularly plays focused on young women,” said Carr. “It’s such an entertaining and informative piece of art and definitely stays with you long after it’s over.”

“Hysterical!” starts out very funny but things soon turn serious and one by one, the local high school’s cheer squad suffers a mysterious illness that upends the typical high school girl pecking order and leaves the girls emotionally vulnerable and clearly suffering.

Both plays center on young women in sports, a hot button issue these days, as are ideas of young women having autonomy over their bodies and a voice to advocate for themselves. These are several of the themes in the plays that most appealed to director Tracy Brigden. 

“Both plays are really about listening to women, women having power over their own destinies,” she said, adding that since the main characters are young women, the plays also spotlight the foundational support, care and belief that leads to great things in adulthood. “So in that right, the plays are incredibly prescient and hitting right where we are unfortunately in the zeitgeist now but at the same time they are great stories with heart and humor. I think there is also the added element of these two stories that are the worlds in which the stories take place — one in the fencing world and one in the cheerleading world that add another very entertaining and fascinating element.”

One might wonder why the artistic directors, both middle-aged men, would choose a girl power theme for this season, but both are parents of middle school girls, so it’s a world they are inhabiting right now. Peck previously directed a play about young women’s soccer, “The Wolves,” so the sporting theme is still compelling and relevant.

Stauffer said her play, “Hysterical!,” was inspired by news accounts of a group of young women suffering from mass psychogenic illness, and she has created a story that has heart and conveys the girls’ suffering. She said the cheerleaders are only on stage, making them the central players in their stories, without coaches or parents on stage.

 “It’s just them navigating this really personal and huge issue sort of alone but with each other..It all feels incredibly lucky that they found my play and were able to pair it with Gracie’s play," she said. "There is something really incredible too about the challenges that they are giving these actresses who are going to have to play very different characters in these two plays and also learn two very specific physical skill sets of fencing and cheer. My hat is tipped to all of them.”

Brigden said audiences can expect to relate to this play: “I think there is recognizability in the relationships and the challenges these women face in the day-to-day challenges that I think all young women are up against especially in this modern moment but even if you are not a 17-year old, you are going to understand and relate to the place in a broader way.”

Both Winn and Peck said audiences will find the stories told here very recognizable but with a fresh and contemporary bent. “At the teenage girl’s core, any teenager really, is this fundamental desire to want to belong, to want to be part of something, to want to connect to another human being,” said Peck. “These plays deal with the idea of what happens when maybe you are doing something or you are on the outside of the group looking in and how that affects your psyche and wanting to connect.”

Bridgen said both plays have the hallmarks of what make a great play, which is that they both explore very specific worlds that audiences get immersed in. “From those very specific worlds emerge these very universal themes and I think that’s what allows a play to sing and really speak in a broader way than just an entertaining story about girls who cheerlead or girls who fence.”

For more information about Thrown Stone, visit thrownstone.org.