Lucy Schmidt, 17, will be playing Puppy, a leading role ‘The Tall Girls,’ which explores gender equality issues through a 1930s women’s
basketball team.
WEST ORANGE/SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Though it is set during the 1930s Dust Bowl, “The Tall Girls” is a play to which contemporary audiences can easily relate.
That is because the show — which is set to make its East Coast debut at West Orange’s Luna Stage on Oct. 8 — centers on a 1930s girls’ basketball team dealing with issues of women’s equality, which many would argue remains a problem today. Just as females in 2015 struggle with a lack of opportunities and the setbacks unexpected pregnancies can cause, so too do the main characters in the play, which inspired director Jane Mandel to take on “The Tall Girls.”
In a nation where women are paid 78 cents for every dollar a man makes and where the House of Representatives recently voted to defund Planned Parenthood, Mandel said she appreciated the opportunity to tell a story that illustrates women’s issues. And by doing so, she said she hopes audience members of both genders will wonder what society can do to help those in circumstances similar to the ones presented in the show, which happen to this day.
“We’ve had a lot of progress, but we haven’t really broken through,” Mandel, who founded Luna Stage in 1992, told the West Orange Chronicle in a Sept. 17 phone interview. “Women always have to fight harder for what they get because there are not a lot of things that are really in place (to help them). We make progress, but then it still seems like we’re fighting for things that we shouldn’t have to be fighting for.”
Photo Courtesy of Sandrine Dupiton
Cast members of ‘The Tall Girls’ at Luna Stage are, from left, Mike Mihm, Daisy Chase, Emily Verla, Lucy Schmidt, Brigie Coughlin and Vanessa Cardenas.
A lack of acting opportunities for women was actually part of the reason Meg Miroshnik wrote “The Tall Girls.” Inspired to write a play about a girls’ basketball team after learning that her grandfather coached one in the 1930s, Miroshnik said she thought such a production would be a great chance for a group of young actresses to explore complex characters — especially when there are so few in the theater.
“Women are seriously underrepresented on stage,” Miroshnik told the Chronicle in a Sept. 17 phone interview, adding that she is a member of the Kilroys advocacy group to combat the problem. “I just think it’s important that (women’s) stories are told. I want to tell them, and I want to see other people telling them too, as an audience member.”
While basketball may seem like an unusual vehicle for discussing women’s rights, Miroshnik said the sport was actually an effective way of showing how each of the teenage girls in the play related to one another despite their very different personalities. It was also a way for them to exert their independence when the rest of society was telling them they should be more “ladylike,” she said.
Mandel agreed that basketball acts as a tool of empowerment in the play, with each character recognizing through playing that they, too, have the talent and ambition to assert themselves, even as females in the 1930s.
The only problem is that playing basketball works much better on the page than it does on the stage with a group of actresses with minimal experience in the sport. The director said she is bringing in a coach to train the cast; but, even with the help, she admitted that all bets are off once it is show time.
“I hope people are ready to throw a ball back on stage,” Mandel joked. “I’m a little worried about this live basketball, but we’ll see.”
Things should go smoothly if the actresses are as good at dribbling as they are at performing. Mandel said she has been quite impressed with her cast, pointing out that they are rapidly becoming as much of a team offstage as their characters are in the show. Plus, she said the fact that they are so young themselves gives them a special insight into their characters.
“I find that the girls are just very thoughtful, very opinionated, very excited about the work,” Mandel said, explaining that she likes holding discussions about the play with the cast. “They really come up with stuff on their own that I might not have ever thought of. They have ideas that really astound me, and I find it very enjoyable to work with them.”
Lucy Schmidt, who plays Puppy, is enjoying the experience of participating in her first professional theater production after years of performing in school and community plays. The 17-year-old Columbia High School senior said she is having a lot of fun working with the “fantastic” cast and is “in awe” of Mandel’s precise direction.
As a performer, Schmidt said it has also been interesting inhabiting a character that has never been seen before by East Coast audiences. Unlike iconic characters that seemingly come with a performance template crafted by all the previous actors who have played them, she said Puppy has only been played and seen by audiences a few times, which has given her the opportunity to make the role her own.
“It gives me a lot more freedom with the character,” Schmidt told the Chronicle in a Sept. 17 phone interview, pointing out that she has never seen a production of “The Tall Girls.” “I’m not going to play her the same way as the original actress did, and no one is going to compare me to her. And I think that’s great because it gives me the chance to explore the role more.”
In order to prepare for portraying Puppy, the sole wealthy girl of the group who is afraid to disappoint her disapproving mother, Schmidt said she researched how both the poor and middle class lived during the Dust Bowl while reading the play repeatedly. Though she did not relate to the character at first glance, she said she soon realized that her own experience playing on a girls’ ultimate Frisbee team — which involved having to scrape together members and often missing tournaments she could not afford to attend, while the boys actually had two teams with a large budget — allowed her to understand the inequality Puppy and her teammates faced.
And many women still face that inequality, which is why Schmidt said she is proud to be taking part in “The Tall Girls.” She explained that it seems that the media tells girls how to live every day, but this play sends a different message — one that every woman should always keep in mind.
“It says ‘it’s OK to be who you are,’” Schmidt said. “What matters is the people who are by your side and what you think of yourself. And I think that’s important.”
“The Tall Girls” opens Oct. 8 and runs through Nov. 1 at Luna Stage in West Orange. To order tickets, visit www.lunastage.org.