‘I Was Unbecoming Then’ at Next Stage Explores Girlhood in the Early 2000s

It’s tough being a teenage girl; learning to navigate the world, as Britney Spears so poignantly crooned: “not a girl, not yet a woman.” Between the hormones, the pressure to meet the myriad of social, academic and familial expectations, and just trying to make it to class on time, it’s easy to get lost in it all. Through experimental choral work and dance-theatre, playwright Lyndsey Bourne and director Ilana Khanin aim to reflect on these ideas with their musical, I Was Unbecoming Then at Toronto Fringe’s Next Stage Festival.

Running from October 16-27, the Next Stage Theatre Festival is a curated collection of six theatrical explorations of what it means to be ourselves in relation to our communities, society, and the universe that contains us all. Featuring musicals, drag performances, and plays, Next Stage intends to be a platform for elevating theatre artists who are ready for their next stage! We got to speak to Lyndsey and Ilana about I Was Unbecoming Then’s premiere for a Canadian audience at the festival.

I Was Unbecoming Then follows twelve girls as they practice and perfect their parts in their high school choir, desperate to please Bruce, their choir director. The show reflects on how sexual violence shapes self-image and worldview, and explores the effects of early 2000s culture and media on young women.

Lyndsey and Ilana’s team, both on stage and on the production side, features an entirely women, trans and non-binary team. “This has been true of other work we’ve done. So, for us, it is not unique to this show and has felt normal,” says the duo.

Set in 2006, this play is intentional about how the zeitgeist of the early 2000s shaped the beliefs and worldviews about femininity, queerness and our own autonomy that young women were up against.

“I remember in 2007 coming to school for choir at 7:15 in the morning and everyone had watched Gossip Girl […] and other shows like Tthe OC, Laguna Beach, The Hills, it was clear that the mainstream culture at the time was obsessed with presenting a very specific image of teenage girlhood. And this was when our relationship to the presentation and performance of self was radically changing too, because of YouTube, Facebook, camera phones, digital cameras,” says Lyndsey. “You could suddenly put your image online and look at how other people put their image online. […] And suddenly girlhood, or the image of girlhood, was a commodity in a new way.”

Originally developed off-Broadway by New York City’s Obie-Award winning theatres, Ars Nova and The Tank, the playwright and director duo are “excited for the chance to work with a Canadian cast and team and share it with a Canadian audience for the first time,” noting that although developed abroad, the play itself, set in a North Vancouver high school music room, is “distinctly Canadian.”

“We created this show for Ars Nova ANT Fest in 2018, and after sharing it with that audience, wanted to keep developing it further. Along with the composer, Sam Kaseta, we were excited about the formal experimentation of this work, how our three distinct entry points—text, music, and movement—worked together in a way not usually represented in musicals.”

With a cast of 12 actors, including Dora-Award winner Heeyun Park 박희윤, the ensemble cast was described by Ilana and Lyndsey as “one of the greatest joys,” though it did come with a lesson. “It’s a challenge to have a cast of twelve—the resources necessary to have a workshop are sizable and means the developmental stages move more slowly.”

On working together as a playwright and director on this piece, the duo says: “We are not precious about ideas, not interested in egos and are very comfortable in discomfort. Working through creative disagreements is an active part of our process together.”

Ilana adds, “We are interested in interdisciplinarity and experiments – what it means for there to be a real experiment onstage. So we are invested in a process that is rigorous about dealing with what is actually happening in the room, at this time, with the real people involved.”

When discussing the future of the piece, the duo wants I Was Unbecoming Then to have another life. “Next Stage has been the first time we’ve had the chance to think about the design world of this piece, and we’ve only dipped into the possibilities,” Ilana says. “We’re still learning about what the show is, and different versions of it feel exciting. The piece is alive and every rehearsal and every performance we keep making new discoveries and responding to our own changing relationships to the content.”

I Was Unbecoming Then is running at Toronto Fringe’s Next Stage Festival until October 26 at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre.