Review: Hungry Teenage Track Stars by Broad Theatre
by Michael Meigs

 

Theatre is a gymnasium for empathy, a Facebook meme admonishes us. But it's also a Tardis, a magic space that can take you anywhere, anytime, to anyone. That's how on a Friday night we found ourselves in the aching space of female adolescence.

 

First sight: two rows of teenage women, squintng at us as if they were ranged on the other side of a two-way mirror. Wordless beneath a roar of pop music, they work intently on their own faces. Fixing makeup, softening flaws, highlighting best features as eyebrow pencils, tubes of gloss, powder brushes fly from hand to hand. Amending, seeking perfection. Apparently unaware of the others in this tableau. Without a word, the image provides the theme of Hungry Teenage Track Stars by Anikka Lekven.

 

In 2019 Lekven and director Molly Fonseca created Broad Theatre, a waggishly titled company devoted to creating theatre by and about people of marginalized gender. They started small, at the Vortex Austin's Pony Shed, with Lekven performing Fonseca's script for a one-woman show. They did short pieces for Austin's annual FronteraFest at the Hyde Park Theatre. Hungry Teenage Track Stars is their first full-length production, supported by a City of Austin arts grant.

 

 

Five young women practice cross-country running for their high school under the dominion (not the tutelage) of a male coach. Most of the first act is broadly imagined and directed, playing on stereotypes. Travis Owens as the coach is a yappingly enthusiastic caricature of Sports Male. The team is going to state finals against their arch rival, the Woodlands. Coach's high-pitched male excitement at competition rouses chants, cheering, and some defiant outcries against the opponents, but his pep talks are hilariously misguided and mistargeted. Animated, apprehensive, naïve to wildly different degrees, the young women are clutched in defense—sometimes against one another but more often against the outside world.

 

The preparation for the track meet and the aftermath establish an arc, but the those events are mostly irrelevant to Broad Theatre's depiction of developing womanhood. Lekven has a fine ear for dialogue. In the first act these five women—played by Taylor Childress Amara Johnson, Alicia Romariz,Ariane Stier, and Shelby Surdam—are full of energy, eager to share, amazed by one another and the world. Chatter and anecdote quickly establish identities, breaking the play's opening tableau into confidences and rapidly evolving friendships.

 

Amara Johnson is self-assured Alex, with strong opinions, confident in her athletic abilities. Shelby Surdam as Kayla is the sparkplug, indispensable in any group, cheerful, loquacious, and supportive. Ariane Stier's Emily is the least sophisticated and most vulnerable; amid giggling and sex talk at the race venue hotel, she's handed a hot romance novel that astounds her. Alicia Romariz as Haley is matter of fact, largely silent and unmoved by the myths of heroic sport. Taylor Childress's Sarah is lonely but self-sufficient. Character exposition and back story sparkle in explosively emotional exchanges. These young women are hungry, and not only for food.

 

 

The second act is significantly darker. The nasty thrust of competition alters relations, and not only in the supposedly clean world of sports. Owens as coach becomes intrusive. Fonseca's direction makes it clear that his enthusiasm for Alex's outstanding performance is tinged with lust. Emily's race resut is catastrophic. Coach accuses her, harshly criticizes her and reproaches her for letting him (and the team) down When she's driven to reply, he stands not listening, mute and disdainful. Her teammates seek to reach her as friends, but she's initially despondent and angrily unreachable. Haley reveals herself (though only to the audience) as a secret bulemic miserable with herself.  Chipper Kayla dipenses lengthy advice to Sarah on making friends and is soon surprised, confused, and awed by the result. 

 

Nathan Markiewicz's set gives us a stark brick-lined courtyard behind the high school. With assistance from J. Mwaki's lighting design and swift provision of additional set pieces, it transforms into other locales—including a hotel room with a wide bed smoothly and suddenly delivered.

 

Oh, metaphorical Tardis, this was an exhilarating experience but also an uncomfortable reminder of the sharp tastes of hormones and stress of my own adolescence. Would I want to linger at this unfamiliar destination? Probably not. I'd be tempted to leap to five years later to see where these quickly morphing persons wind up, once they've overcome their distresses and glimpsed their own potential.

 

It was a privilege to spend time with these characters and this cast. Great things beckon for them, both without and within. And for Leven and Fonseca's Broad Theatre.

 

EXTRAS

Click to view full cast and crew information for Broad Theatre's Hungry Teenage Track Stars

 

Program leaflet, front and back

 

---

Hungry Teenage Track Stars
by Annika Lekven
Broad Theatre

September 26th - October 12th, 2024

Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St., Austin

Tickets $12 - $50, available online HERE