Hilary, a middle-school student, has just moved to Falcon, Colorado. She wears all the wrong clothes, says all the wrong things, and most of the other students are ready to tease her for it, except one, who reminds them to ask themselves what Jesus would do. Socially, things might be looking a little bleak. But Hilary has an improbable secret weapon to get in with one group of girls — a passion for, and deep knowledge of, keeping horses. They start to get to know each other. What happens when the conversation moves from secret weapons to secrets?
falcon girls — directed by May Adrales and running now at Yale Repertory Theatre through Nov. 2 — tells the story of six middle-school-age girls growing up in rural Falcon, Colorado who have gotten heavily involved in the world of horse judging, a competitive team activity in which participants learn to visually evaluate horses for their qualities as runners, jumpers, workers, and breeders. As the very first scene of the play deftly demonstrates, a horse judging team comes off somewhere between an academic quiz bowl team and as a training ground for agriculture school; it’s the kind of middle-school activity for people who might likely someday become trainers or veterinarians. It also, as it turns out, becomes a magnifying glass for a deep glance at the deeply felt yet constantly shifting alliances, animosities, hatreds and friendships that can define middle school, a point in most people’s lives awkwardly teetering back and forth between childhood and adulthood.
Playwright Hilary Bettis — in what we’re given to understand is a mostly autobiographical story — makes falcon girls much more than an after-school special largely by getting very specific about the time and place in which she tells her story. Through Bettis’s lens, rural Falcon, Colorado in the mid-1990s is a relatively isolated place with a few prevailing influences. It is, first and foremost, a ranching town. Horses aren’t just a pastime, but a real part of many people’s lives. Evangelical Christianity is a force in the community, powerfully shaping the majority of adults’ and kids’ views on sex, what is permitted (almost nothing) and what is condemned (almost everything). Yet through the media, adolescents are aware of a wider world where things are different. They’re listening to 1990s hip hop, with its teasing of sexual liberation. Some of them are hanging out in internet chat rooms and having explicit conversations with strangers. They experiment with makeup, the possibility of running off to a coastal city, and the inchoate allure of sexuality other than the hetero variety. Bettis weaves a final dark thread through the show of the possibility that the town is being stalked by a serial killer.
