I saw This Is Our Youth for my 17th birthday. I've heard amazing things about this play and had to see it. Honestly, I was expecting to hate it. I thought that it would be the same as when I read On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I heard all these people rave about it and everyone telling me to read it because it is amazing so I did and I hated it. Now the reason I hated the book is because I did not imagine the characters complexly like I couldn't imagine people that are mean to each other complexly. I couldn't imagine that the people being mean to me in school were just dealing with their own issues. Now I have clearly evolved into a person that does not see everything as either black or white but, complex things that deserve our thoughts and attention. I loved this play and is now my favorite play of all time.
The play is set in the 1980's in New York City with three main characters Warren, Dennis, and Jessica played by Kieran Culkin, Michael Cera, and Tavi Gevinson. These three people that are not yet adults and not a teenager anymore trying to figure out life. I think we have two different ideas of what life is like as a teenager and as an adult but what about the awkward middle? This play explores the awkwardness. I constantly feel like I don't belong in either category. Some people have their own perceptions of which one I'm in. I just feel stuck. I have felt stuck many different times in my life, but what I'm feeling now is a very different kind of stuck. I feel stuck in being too much a kid and then being too much of an adult and most of all I feel stuck that I don't know which category I belong in. This play understands the complexity that is being young and not an adult yet. It is filled with great metaphors and so many emotions that I just sat in silence for a bit after trying to understand what I was thinking. I think the play really welcomes the silence that comes after. When you feel so many things at once that you could never tell them all so your only choice is to say them in your head. Imagine if those thoughts that you thought about in silence were said aloud you get This Is Our Youth.
Love,
Maddie
