This year, I’ve been working as a teacher’s assistant at a local middle school. Initially, I was quite nervous. No girl wants to go back and relive their middle school years. It is a time filled with pimples, periods and passive-aggressiveness. 

However, as my time teaching went from days to months, I began to develop a new perspective on my junior high days. I don’t look at my students with judgemental eyes or second-hand embarrassment for their choices. They are just kids, searching for ways to express themselves as they are granted new freedoms.

Within my work, though, I still only see a sliver of what it means to be an early adolescent. There is so much that happens after school, interactions with friends and parents that seem too embarrassing to ever be spoken about, much less demonstrated on stage.

“Falcon Girls” by Hilary Betis tells an intensely vulnerable story that gives audiences full insight into the cringeworthy and ridiculous world of a middle school girl. 

Before seeing the show, I spoke with the artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theater, James Bundy, about what to expect from the play.

“People are going to experience something that feels new to them and also something that feels familiar to them,” said Bundy. “They’ll feel transported out of their daily lives to the consideration of the kinds of larger human questions that are hard to come to grips with when you don’t set aside the time for your imagination to go on a journey with dramatic storytellers.”

A rustic, horse-stable inspired backdrop set the stage. Using occasional projections to denote location and spotlights to direct the focus of the audience, the show opened up a world of girlhood and adolescence many can relate to. 

Set in the 1990s rural Colorado, this memoir followed the playwright and her friends as they competed in an FFA horse-judging competition. The audience received glimpses of home lives and what the girls got up to when they thought no one was watching. 

The FFA team of Falcon, Colorado, was made up of an eclectic group of young women — and Dan. Despite the differences in their lives, the girls were bonded by their love for horses. 

With their horses they found unconditional love, freedom and protection. This was a stark contrast to the world they live in, which was characterized by violence. A serial killer roamed the area, targeting young women, and he was yet to be caught. 

“One of the things I’m trying to get at in the play is the juxtaposition of the beauty of the world and horses, and the ruthless brutality of a misogynistic violent world,” said Betis. “For these girls the only messages they get in every part of their life is essentially that they are disposable sex objects and there are men who want to kill them.” 

In the midst of this violence, the girls created a community based on friendship and shared ideals. In traditional adolescent fashion, they were at the same time horribly cruel and devastatingly loyal to each other. 

When the girls believed a serial killer had come to their hotel, they were willing to die for each other. When they were bored, they ranked each other from most to least attractive. They used snarky nicknames for each other: “grade horse” to describe Hilary’s mixed ethnicity and “2.69” to slut-shame Jasmine for hooking up with a boy in their grade. 

Hiding behind the bullying and passive aggressive behavior, was an intense need for belonging and community.

Hilary — played by Gabrielle Policano — puts it best when she described her desire for a plaque. She explained to her mother that she wanted a plaque so she can remember that “for one moment I did something special and I mattered.”

In the silence that followed this statement, I was able to reflect on my own contributions to the world. I thought about the students I taught, the articles I had written and the people I had loved. 

The quest for meaning is a universal part of the human experience. Hilary and her friends, in the hyper-niche setting of a rural middle school in the 1990s, connected to audience members in their search for significance.

“I think that plays are the strongest and can be the most universal when they’re really looking specifically at a world,” said director May Adrales DRA ’06. “Universal is found in the specific.”

If you grew up in a rural area, had a hopeless crush on someone or engaged in any kind of embarrassing middle school behavior, the play found a way to pull some distant and almost forgotten sense of recognition and awkwardness.

The awkwardness was a palpable feeling that seemed to permeate throughout the theater like a pungent fog. But nonetheless, the show went on. Hilary continued to talk a bit too much about her Walmart T-shirt, Jasmine had phone sex with her online boyfriend and Mary danced jerkily on stage to the Salt-n-Pepa. 

Throughout all of this though, was a sense of humor only gained through a jaded retrospect. The fervor with which they care about each other and their horses is admirable, if not extreme. We laughed at their intense pre-competition rituals and the urgency with which they tell each other “I love you.”

 “I love you like a sister and not a lesbian,” Mary and April told each other after April revealed her plans to run away from her abusive stepdad. 

“I like you too much, so I can’t be with you,” Hilary told Dan after he confessed his feelings to her. 

“I love you even though you don’t believe me,” Hilary’s mom told her after an argument. 

Also central to the play’s story is Hilary’s relationship with her mother — Beverlee. To her friends and classmates she spoke of her mother as a kind, turtle-saving woman. But behind closed doors the pair argued over matters as trivial as pancakes for dinner and as significant the abortion Hilary received. 

In the final scene, Hilary laid out all her insecurities and secret thoughts to her mother as they drove home from an FFA competition. She confessed her belief that she is a bad person and her constant wondering about what her child might have been like. Beverlee, with a frustration only born out of intense love, attempted to put into words just how beautiful and worthy her daughter is. 

It was at this point that tears were streaming down my face. One of the cruelest pains is knowing that someone you love doesn’t see themselves the way you do. One of the most difficult shames to overcome is the belief that you are unworthy of happiness. As these two forces collided on stage, I felt both comforted and exposed. 

I believe part of the reason I looked back at my junior high years with such distaste was because I felt I was too old to be acting the way I was. I was too old to wear Harry Potter T-shirts, too old to be in the school musical and too old to be acting that foolishly around my crush. 

But after interacting with my students and watching this show, I realized just how young I really was. I was a child, desperately trying to find my way in a world that seemed to be growing up around me. We were all grasping for some form of maturity. Some girls stuffed their bras, others kissed boys in the bathroom. But deep down, we all felt like toddlers sloppily trying on our mom’s makeup. 

“Falcon Girls” is an uncomfortable exposition of embarrassing experiences, and at the same time, a comforting realization that you are not alone.