Ravenous–for debate, for the potential of a win, for the love of women–four teenage boys writhe, thrust, twerk, and strip to a mind-numbing base-drop and technicolor pulse. Though the sights and sounds of a high school house party are, perhaps, sickeningly familiar, these boys are actually in a classroom. Between popped buttons and collars, they are frantically scribbling, brainstorming their (as they will assure you) extremely impressive arguments to their high school debate grand finals topic: feminism has failed women—affirmative.
These are some of the first moments of Trophy Boys, which began performances earlier this month at MCC Theater. Australian playwright and performer Emmanuelle Mattana’s (ABC’s MUSTANG’s FC) debut work will run Off-Broadway until July 27, having already been extended before it even opened. With Tony winner Danya Taymor (John Proctor is the Villain) at the helm, Mattana is joined by Louisa Jacobson (HBO’s The Gilded Age), Esco Jouléy (Wolf Play), and Terry Hu (Netflix’s Never Have I Ever).
Despite portraying high school-aged boys, each of Trophy Boys’ actors identify as either female, gender non-conforming, or non-binary. They perform in drag. Casting outside of these identities is a “non-negotiable” for Mattana, whose primary curiosity is what it means to explore gender as a performance. How might audience members understand gender to be “something that can be learned, taught, put on, or taken off?”
The performativity of gender, for Mattana, is heightened during teenage years, when boys are coming into their physical and societal power, testing the limits of what they can get away with, and with whom. There’s a grotesqueness to puberty and all of its sudden, seemingly uncontrollable changes and urges. The boys of the play exist in an uncomfortable, ever-shifting space between childhood (where their tussles can simply land them in a time out) and manhood (where their crimes can land them in handcuffs). Mattana, who identifies as nonbinary and uses she/they pronouns, finds a comedic richness in non-cis-male bodies inhabiting the absurd, and sometimes disturbing, masculinity of teenage boys.
“There's something about having female and queer bodies on stage that lets the audience know that we’re in on the joke with them,” Mattana says. “It's also a real reclamation of the way that we, as women and queer people, have been treated by a lot of men. There's something about being able to, quite literally, step into the shoes of our oppressors and poke fun at them that is part of the joy of the show.”
And Trophy Boys is joyful. Raucous, even. From the hand-on-heart assertions that they love women, and therefore could not possibly argue that feminism has failed, to the sudden gasps and moans of a pornographic ringtone, the audience is both laughing at and with the boys. Until they’re not. As sudden as a pimple can erupt onto a pubescent face, an allegation pops onto the internet that threatens both the outcome of the debate and the boys’ futures.
“It sort of sucks the air out of the room,” Mattana gleefully admits of the tonal shift. “How tuned in are you to the people [in the audience] around you? What are they laughing at? What are you laughing at? How might that rock you by the time you get to the end of the play?”
Trophy Boys had its inspiration in a variety of sources, including Mattana’s own experience as a high-school debate participant.
“The way the play is structured really mirrors the way that I felt writing it,” Mattana says. “I found myself really reluctant to go [to a dramatic place] as a writer. That speaks to something societally we’re all feeling. We don’t know how to deal with this behavior.”
As Mattana graduated high school, 2021 rape allegations against Christian Porter, then Australia’s Attorney General, set the country alight—and diminished Porter’s chances at becoming the country’s next Prime Minister. Porter’s accuser alleged their encounter occurred at a national debating tournament that had taken place when Porter was 17.
“[The allegations] made me reflect on the sorts of men, the sorts of boys that I knew,” Mattana explained. “I had always joked with friends from debating that we probably knew the person who was going to be the next Prime Minister. It reached a point where we thought that was not a very funny joke.”
In a case of self-diagnosed “COVID Lockdown Playwright Syndrome,” Mattana wrote themself into Trophy Boys as one of the teenage boys, Owen. Described as “earnest, but self-important” in the play’s notes and as a “tool” by his peers, Owen dreams of being President.
“He’s profoundly annoying,” Mattana laughs. “I realized Owen is the playwright stand-in. There’s something really specific about him and about the boys who inspired him that I felt empowered by taking him on.”
There’s also empowerment to be found as an audience member of Trophy Boys. In reflecting on the feedback received from Australian audiences during last year’s sold-out tour, Mattana said what struck them most was how some audience members tried to guess the city, the school, or the allegation that had inspired the piece. Oftentimes, though they were incorrect as to the specifics, they had nailed something far more important.
“Every place has these issues,” Mattana says with equal parts acceptance and resignation. “That’s what’s really exciting. The more specific you get, the more truthful you become, universally. That’s really the goal of the show.”
The New York theatre community has tried to reckon with these truths in recent seasons, with a revival of How I Learned to Drive, and premieres of Prima Facie and John Proctor is the Villain on the Main Stem post-pandemic. There have also been attempts at greater reckonings, with a cast member in the 2019 revival of West Side Story and producer Scott Rubin facing assault allegations and subsequent backlash. In Trophy Boys, by bringing queer voices into the ever-growing discourse on the problem of sexual assault, Mattana hopes not only to try to figure out how to answer lingering, confounding societal questions—but also to highlight that the heteronormative, misogynistic system doesn’t currently benefit anyone.
“All these stories are coming up because we’re trying to figure out what to do with the mess we found ourselves in,” Mattana states, citing a particular affinity for John Proctor Is the Villain (also directed by Trophy Boys’ Danya Taymor). “Okay, the system we have right now is terrible for women. It’s terrible for men. Maybe queer people, who are brave enough to reject the whole thing, have some hope for where these conversations might be able to go.”
These are conversations we are learning to have, to debate. It’s a debate that is increasingly-relevant, entangled in emotion, and can sometimes, not unlike the prompt the Trophy Boys receive, feel like a game lost before it has even begun. But Mattana does not argue, as her characters must, that feminism has failed women.
“Danya said something great,” Mattana replies to the inevitable question. “[Feminism] can’t have failed because it hasn’t finished. Feminism isn’t over. So as long as we continue to try, it will continue to succeed and fail in a million different ways. But it will continue.”
And as feminism continues, how do men and women, girls and boys, move forward? Mattana considers her experience in high school debate, where she was taught to diminish her feminine traits and present as emotionless—more masculine.
“Something women and girls get told a lot in high school debating is that they’re too shrill or too emotional,” Mattana reflects. “What’s really important to me now are the human aspects of argument. You have to have your heart and your empathy and your capacity for emotion right at the forefront. If we choose to lead with heart and [femininity] and care, then maybe that benefits us all.”
Louisa Jacobson, Esco Jouléy, and Emmanuelle Mattana in Trophy Boys
Louisa Jacobson, Esco Jouléy, and Emmanuelle Mattana in Trophy Boys
Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, Esco Jouléy, and Terry Hu in Trophy Boys
Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, Terry Hu, and Esco Jouléy in Trophy Boys
Louisa Jacobson and Terry Hu in Trophy Boys
Terry Hu, Louisa Jacobson, and Emmanuelle Mattana in Trophy Boys
Terry Hu, Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, and Esco Jouléy in Trophy Boys
Louisa Jacobson in Trophy Boys
Emmanuelle Mattana in Trophy Boys
