Content Warning: Themes of strong language, violence, and sexual content. Rated PG-13.

Before the pandemic forced all theatre online, there was American Girl Premiere, an educational computer game where fans of the franchise could create their own stage productions using the American Girl characters, sets, and stories. Made famous for its ironically amusing text-to-speech dialogue and other digital quirks, the game gained a cult following before fading into obscurity in the gaming world. Now, The Juvenilia Collective is bringing it back, using the game’s cursed yet silly AI voices, and dated graphics, to examine what the history books left out of this iconic children’s franchise. 

In The American Girl Cycle, six playwrights, inspired by the historical fiction of the American Girl brand, have reimagined and radicalized the stories of our favorite vinyl-skinned girls. Each playwright flips the stories of Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, Addy, Samantha, and Molly on their heads through the software of American Girl Premiere, making them absurdly funny and darkly true. 

Founded in 2017 in Southern Oregon, The Juvenilia Collective is a group of theatre artists creating work that connects and reconnects adult audiences with their inner child through queer and diverse works. Projects have included The Drink-Along Parody Series, Cabin 12 (Fresno Rogue Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Reading, Oregon Fringe Festival 2019), Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Oregon Fringe Festival 2018), and Horse Girls. Aurelia Grierson is the Artistic Director of The Juvenilia Collective.