Venues
Events
VideoTheater
Girl Growing Up
Review of The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Writer and lead actress Marielle Heller (Photo: Courtesy of Jim Baldassare)
First kisses, first times, first loves. They’re the cause of every teenager’s angst. Affairs with mom’s boyfriend, acid trips, and lesbian trysts on Quaaludes? Not quite as common.
But for Minnie Goetze, that is reality. And The Diary of a Teenage Girl depicts every harrowing detail of that reality. Adapted by Marielle Helle, it’s based upon a graphic novel of the same name by Guggenheim fellowship recipient Phoebe Gloeckner.
Minnie’s voice drives the entirety of the work as she documents each grizzly and graphic detail of her coming of age not through the conventional pen and paper journal but rather a tape recorder. This aural element makes Diary unusually fit to the stage, a rarity for any novel, never mind a graphic novel.
Through the previous recordings and live sessions of the journal, Minnie painstakingly dictates her sexual awakening with her mother’s boyfriend and a notorious lesbian with a less desirable reputation. Minnie is nervous, excited, in love, in lust, hateful, confused, suicidal, and finally resolved since her “life has only just begun.” She wavers between wanting to be a woman to plainly acknowledging that she is still just a child. In other words, extreme as her situation may be, she’s a teenager caught in the crux of growing up.
Minnie’s bed—and tape recorder—sits dead center in the square performance space that seats the audience stadium-style on all sides. Action happens behind, below and around all sides, completely immersing everyone in Minnie’s piece of 1970s San Francisco.
The surrounding walls are the perfect amount of 70s kitsch, with hippy flowers, arrows right out of The Who’s trademark, and stars you’d expect on a teenager’s ceiling. What makes them less kitsch and satisfyingly powerful is their second role as a projection screen. Family films, Rocky Horror Picture Show clips and concerts play upon the walls. Most importantly, renditions of the original comic book do as well, tying in the play’s source in a seamless and relevant way.
The play also retains its literary background with prominent water symbolism. In a manner that would make Freud proud, Minnie’s discussion of water tracks her changing emotional state. It makes her feel sexy, fall in love, fantasizes her own suicide, and finally makes her reach out for help.
All of these elements add up to make Minnie an undeniably endearing character and make the performance entirely worth the trip to the financial district. Despite squeamish sexual exploits and train wreck decisions, her “unabashed optimism,” as the play touts, shines through.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl will play at the 3LD Art and Technology Center thru April 12, 2010. To purchase tickets and for more information about the show, please visit www.thediaryofateenagegirl.com/.