“Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo” Tells It Like It Was

Ah, elementary school. Fingerpaints, class pets, pudding cups. Enough Nicoles that you had to move to last initials. Very political cafeteria seating decisions. Fighting with your boyfriend because you kept putting your arm around him. Getting boilingly angry when student council election results fell along gender lines. Kissing your fellow softball second-basewoman in the batting shed on a triple dare and then feeling oddly good about it. Uh. Anyone? . . . anyone?

Remember this game? {Photo by Erica Rae Brown}

If this sounds familiar, and you live in the Los Angeles area, get thee to the Carrie Hamilton Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse this weekend, December 8th and/or 9th, for Gina Young’s hilarious and moving Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo. There you will find, finally, a theatrical representation of 90s childhood that doesn’t shy away from the hard questions, the many subtle types of bullying, the frequent dance routines, or the weird Barbie sex. You’ll find a diverse cast of twelve women who “had a blast buying sneakers together” and are great at playing kids savvy enough to make some keen observations about fourth grade culture but cute and realistic enough to still embody it. And you’ll find a poignant argument against limiting self-expression for people of any age. (Honestly, if none of that rings a bell, go anyway – you’ll laugh regardless, and you’ll learn a lot.)

Naserin Bogado plays Billy, who is just misunderstood. {Photo by Erica Rae Brown}

Writer/director Gina Young remembers the queer elementary school experience as “a complex navigation of land mines” – sleepovers, for example, and labels, and nosy little sisters. In a series of overlapping stories, Young’s characters weave through the resulting explosions, with varying results. Help comes in the form of repurposed pop culture touchstones (queer Grease!!), the wisdom of hindsight, and the power of imagination. When one character says to another, after a definite Thing, “We can’t actually talk about this. It’s not a thing. There isn’t even a language for it?” it’s heartbreaking, but since this is a play and not actually my life, instead of brooding in the backseat of a red Minivan for six hours, the stage directions call for the scene to “gradually escalate into a full-on, over the top S/M parody with spanking.” It’s theatrical catharsis at its finest.

Nadia Vazquez as Penelope, also misunderstood. {Photo by Erica Rae Brown}

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo was born in the bejeweled adolescent brains of Young and her co-writer Amanda-Faye Jimenez – there’s “a kernel of our actual experiences” in each of the show’s vignettes, says Young – and grew along with them until it finally reached the stage this June, in a sold-out run at the Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. After that, it planned to rollerskate directly to the Pasadena Playhouse for some summertime shows, but hit a rough patch when a higher-up there was uncomfortable with the title. Luckily, the local queer and arts communities threw their collective weight behind an e-mail writing campaign, and the show is going on.  Young says she’s “thrilled we were able to come to an agreement that allows us to present the show in Pasadena,” and promises that the show will be “all the better” for the delay.

The Bedroom Girls. If you look closely, you can see their imaginary Skip-Its. {Photo by Erica Rae Brown}

You lucky Californians can buy tickets here.  If you can’t make it, and you’re as sad as I am about that, never fear – a DVD release is in the works. Find out more by hitting up mastermind Gina Young at www.ginayoung.com; [email protected], or on Twitter @ohginayoung. And Californians, pull a couple of ponytails for me.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Cara

Cara is a former contributing editor for Autostraddle and a current staff writer at Atlas Obscura. She lives in Somerville with her girlfriend, their roommate, and a cat who can flush the toilet, and is generally thinking about gender, sustainable biodiversity, and/or rock & roll music. You can follow her on twitter @cjgiaimo if you want.

Cara has written 113 articles for us.

10 Comments

  1. THIS LOOKS AMAZING and makes me wish I lived the kind of life that could incorporate a quick jet-set across the country to catch a show.

  2. I totally own that Star Wars shirt that Billy (?) is wearing in the second picture.

    As someone who works in theatre, it always astonishes me when I come across homophobia within the community. Theatre people in general are some of the nicest, most accepting people you’ll ever meet…everyone from the actors on stage, to the gruff stage hands flying scenery, to the little old ladies who volunteer as ushers and everyone in between.

  3. So is it at the Pasadena playhouse? Nothing’s mentioned in their calandar. Could possibly be what theyre calling their “surprise perfomance” a yearly thing they do. I have to say that living in the Pasadena area, if this production actauly makes to OldPas Id be blown away. The PasPlayhouse is one of the most boorishly conservative houses around. I assumed we’d have to wait until the board passed away (a reasonable possibility since the average boad member age is 120 ) before we’d get fresh productions in the area. So yippie if this is going down. I’ll definity be there.

  4. oh my god now i know how everyone who doesn’t live in new york feels when i write posts about cool shit happening in new york. WHY DON’T I LIVE IN LA WHY CAN’T I GO SEE THIS PLAY RIGHT NOW.

  5. Of course I clicked on this article because “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” was one of my very favorite books growing up. The play sounds awesome and I’m sad I can’t see it, but yay that it’s happening! I don’t think I even really knew what “gay” meant when I was in elementary school but I did love Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2.

  6. Booo hiss, because I live in the UK and wouldn’t get to see this play, but its great that its happening :D

  7. Oh this is so my life. I totally laughed at the “weird barbie sex,” and I remember telling my mom I had a girlfriend in 4th grade, when we determined we were “too old and mature to play with boys.”

    She was still surprised when I got a real girlfriend all those years later. She still asks me “wait, you’re queer?” and is serious… Samantha as Samantha, also misunderstood

  8. SERIOUSLY? I lived 15 minutes away from Pasadena for 18 years, but now that I live in San Francisco something cool happens there?

Comments are closed.