To be young! Four budding musicians discover themselves in a summer program for girls

 

You couldn’t pay me to go back to being a teenage girl. I’m perfectly comfortable forgetting that I ever was one, especially now that my psyche has done the heavy-lifting to block most of it out. What I can remember is unwieldy emotion. All of my problems had a big-ness, each decision was an ultimatum. I wasn’t raised to cry, so I mostly stomped around the house with a vacant expression — trying to disconnect from myself but trapped in a slender, pale body that I wished looked more like Jessica Alba’s in Honey.

 

Playwright Eisa Davis remembers that dissonance — the discomfort of trying to be who you are while communicating who you want to be through your taste in clothing, in lovers, in music. Davis’s new, marvelously-casted play ||: GIRLS :|| ||: CHANCE :|| ||: MUSIC :|| explores that tumultuous time in life through 4 characters — Clementine, Fax, Margot, and Rile — all students at a summer music program for girls. The program is free, but getting in is tough. Each girl has to prove her chops to earn a spot.

 

 

Fax (Hillary Fisher) is a vocalist with a neurotic, Type-A stream of consciousness. Rile (Yeena Sung) plays keys and yearns for connection. Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera) is a one-woman woodwinds section whose sole interest is rehearsal. And then there’s Margot (Naomi Latta) who reads Buddhist philosophy, plays drums, and constructs a shroud of mystery that keeps the other girls an arm’s distance away even while drawing them in like moths to flames. Margot’s fire burns brightest when she’s on percussion, though she’s just as eager behind the drum set as she is banging on a table in the food court or knocking rocks together by the river. The other girls have never met anyone else like her and find inspiration in her obsession with improvising. Some girls, like Fax, are “classical girls who have to learn how to improvise”, while Margot is all the way jazz, eschewing “obvious sounds” and instructing Fax that if “you’re writing it, you can’t mess up”. The girls give and take all summer, with Margot doing most of the giving, until jealousy wedges its way in, a common devolution at an age where you’re not sure if you love your bestie like a friend, like a lover, or like a skin suit that you’d like to borrow. 

 

Mel Ng’s costumes anchor us in time — in one scene, Rile enters with a Labubu-festooned backpack, rainbow highlights, brown and white cow print pants, and an electric green fuzzy sweater — while Davis’s writing moves and sounds like teenage girls and their propensity for exaggeration across the ages — “I want to slice off her nipples with a plastic knife” — and their signature turmoil. The play almost ends before it begins when we open on Margot atop a high ledge. The musical aspects of the show have an insider baseball flair, some of the jokes went over my head but the musicians in the audience didn’t miss a beat (pun intended). 

 

 

There’s a refrain shared by Fax and Margot, who’s trying to help Fax to trust herself as a composer as much as a musician, that’s all songwriting filler sounds: da da da. The two sing in their ‘secret language’ all over school and between classes to the chagrin of Rile, who wants in. I, too, was over it from the audience. I didn’t want to hear any more da da das, but the payoff came when the three perform “Out At Sea” with each taking a stunning solo turn. The improvisations here are real, as is the feeling of being at a place in your life you’ve never been before (this is technically true everyday, but it’s never more true than when you’re making big decisions in your adolescence). When audience members arrive in the lobby, they can add colored dots onto a C-scale poster of piano keys, and the cast will incorporate those notes into the show. 

 

||: GIRLS :|| ||: CHANCE :|| ||: MUSIC :|| is as much a treat for musicians, who probably have their own fond memories of summer music programs, as it is carthasis for anyone who’s ever been a teenage girl. At the close of the show, we see the girls a few years in the future. They’re grown women with jobs and partners and we see which of them continued to pursue music with passion. They look back on that summer fondly, though they’re hazy on the details of exactly how they lost touch. As consuming as adolescence can be, it comes with two blessings: the crushing minutiae will dissolve with distance, and it’s just a moment in time.          

 

blacklove 🖤 and starlight 🌟

 

||: GIRLS :|| ||: CHANCE :|| ||: MUSIC :|| at Vineyard Theatre is a co-production with American Conservatory Theater. The play was written and composed by Eisa Davis, directed by Pam McKinnon, and features Gianna DiGregorio Rivera, Hillary Fisher, Naomi Latta, and Yeena Sung. The production opened on May 28, 2026. I received a press ticket for the opening night performance and offer my thanks to The Press Room. 

 

The production will run through June 21, 2026. Tickets for evening shows are $81 and up. Discounted tickets are available for partial view seating ($43), NYS High School students with ID ($20), and through the Vineyard Theatre’s community supported programs ($37.80).