||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||
Eisa Davis
American Conservatory Theater,
In Co-Production with Vineyard Theatre Company
Four teenage girls spending their summer at a conservatory of music program in Berkeley create and share together music, friendship, tension, conflict, and compassion while also balancing the pressures of others’ expectations, their own hopes, and the many possibilities for their futures. In a co-production with Vineyard Theatre Company, American Conservatory Theater presents the world premiere of Eisa Davis’ ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| in a production in which the exceptional musical talents of its cast of four shine forth even as their portrayed characters ride a roller coaster of teen-fueled emotions that sometimes connect them in chatter and comradery and sometimes result in eruptions and isolation.
Director Pam Mackinnon begins the evening by involving twelve audience volunteers who each come on stage to place a number one-through-twelve on adjoining black and white keys of a piano. A pianist enters and plays the sequence in the randomly assigned order. Other cast members arrive and begin to sing with a “da-da” the freshly-ordered notes, creating a new song that they begin to make more interesting by improvising rhythms. Throughout the next hour and fifty minutes, this unique sequence of notes becomes a repeated avenue for the girls to connect and to communicate in a way only they understand.
While they all definitely share a much honed talent for their music, these four teens are about as different in all other dimensions as possible. Classical vocalist Fax (Hillary Fisher) is from a large, African-American family full of brothers and talks a mile a minute with much enthusiasm and energy, explaining,”I never talk to fill silence, I just have a lot to share.” Her approach to music is full of discipline, following the notes as written by the greats of yesteryear. “I like having more of a road map: I can’t just sing something random.” Always appearing in outfits that match and underline the current, teen trends, Fax tells us when she first meets a Filipino-American drummer in her baggy, ragged jeans and boots, “I don’t know how, but this person has already started to shape my future.”
Never too much time elapses before Margot (Naomi Latta) is using her hands, her sticks, or what ever else she can grab in order to tap out a new, compelling, drummed sequence — be it on the box she is sitting, the cafe table, or her drum set. Unlike her new friend, Fax, Margot does not need nor want a sheet of someone else’s composition in front of her. “I just make it up; that’s how music is made.”
Margot in a matter-of-fact voice full of surety quietly declares, “If you are writing [music], you can’t do anything wrong.” Spontaneity, not Fax’s “roadmap,” is what makes her music real. Vague about her own family other than a father she says is an adjunct professor (“sorta like working at Home Depot”), Margot is prone to shock and even scare Fax with her own abandonment of caution, like one near-death encounter with an approaching BART train.
Pianist Rile (Yeena Sung) also has some improvisation in her bones and in her talented fingers, riling (sorry for the pun) Fax when she expands by many heavily pounded notes a Rossini piece as she accompanies the disciplined soprano. Rile — quick to tell others she prefers “they/them” — is open about having a donor-dad and two moms, now separated. The rainbow haired pianist already senses she will one day be a composer of film music although she admits of her life at the keyboard, “I don’t even know why I play.”
This quartet of teen virtuosos-in-the-making is completed by a woodwind-playing Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera) who tends to be a loner, often just passing through with hardly a glance at any of the others. Coming from a family of musicians that have their own band together, she alternates between playing a beautifully fluttering flute and a gigantic, deep-throated baritone sax.
A sizable portion of Eisa Davis’ script is devoted to these four disparate teens just doing what most girls their age do — hang out, talk of subjects both silly and serious, make judgmental statements with profound surety and conviction, and sometimes say things they will later regret. As eavesdroppers, some of these conversations are captivating for us as audience; some are quite frankly not so much. It seems there is some future editing of this world-premiere script that could make the evening a bit tighter.
But when the teens retreat to their musical selves, this evening of live theatre is at its best. When Fax finally lets go of the printed notes in front of her and begins to mirror in lyrically splendid notes the rhythms of Margot’s drummed sequences, the two connect in a shared language much deeper than their communicated words had thus far allowed. Joined by Rile on piano, their trio blooms into an exciting, new piece of music. The three later become like an accomplished jazz trio as their spontaneous spirits generate an extended piece in which Faz writes her first song on the spot, singing repeated versions of “Never been here” as she discovers there is a new song in her that is ready to emerge without needing a pre-written score.
Like in the lives of most teens today, there are to be ground-shaking, explosive interruptions during this rather idyllic summer of music (with theirs being maybe more literal than those generally experienced by their peers). Such events will re-shape and re-calibrate both their present and future lives. Thanks to Davis’ use of ‘flash forwards’ throughout the play, we do get glimpses of where this summer of musical exploration will lead these girls as they become young and accomplished women.
Nina Ball captures the isolation of devotion any musician faces through her designing a set that includes each girl’s separate, practice space. Her scenic artistry also illustrates the unlimited potential of such a summer’s endeavors with a series of panels that climb high both vertically and in slant. Upon those panels, on others high and horizontal, and in surrounding spaces between and beyond, Russell H. Champa paints an entire palate of deep and luxurious colors with a lighting design that reflects the wild swings of teen emotions as well as the rich possibilities of their musical talents. Along with her script, Eisa Davis contributes original music with Fan Zhang designing a sound arena that allows all the played and sung music to find its avenues for being enjoyed. The contrasting personalities of the four teens are made evident not just by script and acting but also by the costumes designed by Mei Ng.
While not every scene of this world premiere completely is equally successful, in the end, there are bits here and there to relish as we peer into this summer of discovery for these four teen talents. American Conservatory Theatre once again advances the world of live theatre by risking a world premiere and by choosing a subject so fitting for a Bay Area where the arts play such a major role in making the region a special play to learn and to live.
Rating: 3 E
||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| continues through April 19, 2026, in a one-hour, fifty-minute (no intermission) world premiere production at American Conservatory Theatre, the Toni Rembe Theatre, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online at https://www.act-sf.org, by phone at 415-749-2228, and by email at tickets@act-sf.org.
Photo Credits: Kevin Berne
