Program gives young teens a voice

“Our goal was to offer theater training to any and all kids or teenagers that wanted it. We also wanted there to be a specialized group that is an all-girls theater company,” says Katie Cappiello of The Arts Effect NYC.

Speaking by phone recently to the Banner, she says the idea behind the All-Girl Theater Company (which is part of The Arts Effect NYC) was “to bring girls together once a week to train together and on top of that to explore their world through theater; address any challenges that they face in their lives through the theater arts as a way of telling their story.” The organization was founded in 2007 by Cappiello and Meg McInerney for girls ranging in age from 9-18 years old.

Cappiello, who’s originally from Brockton, Mass., and McInerney, who hails from Washington, D.C., are both graduates of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and both trained at The Lee Strasberg & Film Institute in New York, which is known for its “method acting.”

Cappiello absolutely loves the theater and the idea of using theater as a way to start conversations.

“Nothing has meant more to me in my life than theater has,” she says. “If it can touch someone, or move someone or spark a conversation, I’m so happy about that and in watching young women do that, watching 14, 15, 16-year-old girls, change people’s minds through their art, is a special thing.”

One of the ways that the young women are making an impact is through their plays, especially with the most recent effort titled SLUT: The Play. SLUT follows the journey of Joey Del Marco, a sixteen-year-old girl who is raped by three friends during a night out. Through Joey’s story and those of girls in her community, audiences witness the damaging impact of slut culture and the importance of being heard.

Written by Cappiello and directed by both her and McInerney, the idea for SLUT was developed beginning in 2012 and “it came about the way all of our plays had come about,” she says.

“We’re sitting in class and we asked them [the young women] what’s going on with their lives,” she recalls. “We had just come back from winter break and the floodgates opened like they always do and the girls couldn’t stop talking about things that I guess are pretty typical things that teenage girls talk about: sex, relationships, their friendships, their status, what’s going on in social media.”

One of the words that kept cropping up in the conversation according to Cappiello was the word slut. The girls were saying such things as “oh, she’s such a slut,” “the last winter break I was such a slut,” or “do you think it makes me a slut because I wanted him to (fill in the blank)?”

McInerney and Cappiello were startled how casually the girls used the word in their everyday language. “They were throwing it around to sort of degrade other girls, degrade themselves, and degrade their own sexuality,” Cappiello recalled.

“When you call a girl a slut it’s so effective because you’re cutting them down to the core of who she is and saying that she is less than,” McInerney adds.

They knew right then and there that the issue was something they wanted to explore in a play.

Both McInerney and Cappiello talked to the parents and let them that know that this was what the girls wanted to talk about. The parents were involved every step of the way.

“Anytime we had a little bit of a script together we invited the parents in, do a reading for them, get their input, get their feedback. A lot of times we’d finish reading a portion of the script and you’d see the parents in the audience in tears, not only because they’re acknowledging maybe or the first time what their daughters are up against, and not just their daughters, but what their sons are up against too,” says Cappiello.

The play premiered in N.Y.C. in 2014 to rave reviews. Last year, the All-Girl Theater Company was invited to perform in Fargo, N.D. and in Los Angeles. Recently, the group was invited by MIT to bring the performance to campus the weekend of May 1-3 for a three-day run. After Cambridge, they follow up their visit with a special invitation from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to perform in Washington, D.C. on May 19.

Growing up, both founders wished that they had had an organization like the All-Girl Theater Company. “The whole reason why Katie and I created this company was because we wanted something that we didn’t have as young people,” McInerney says. “I would have loved as a young girl to have a space where I felt that my voice could be heard and that my feelings mattered.”

SLUT performs Friday, and Saturday May 1 & 2 at 8:00 PM

The Wong Auditorium @ MIT

2 Amherst Street, Cambridge, and

Sunday, May 3 at 12:00 PM in the

Kresge Auditorium @ MIT

48 Massachusetts Avenue, Building W16,

Tickets are $5 in advance or $10 at the door.