Powerstories Theatre congratulates Kira Rockwell as a winner of the 2026 Voices of Women Festival. The committee found The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood beautifully written with well crafted believable characters. The play artfully conveys the lives of girls caught in difficult circumstances, but who still find wonder, humor, and love in their chosen family.

This is a piece that takes teenagers seriously, deftly showing all of the ways they're almost adults... and the many ways they aren't. If you've spent any time with this population, you will fall in love with the raw, silly, truthful characters in this play. These girls truly pop off the page. There is a ton of gorgeous poetry hidden in the dialogue, which somehow felt uncannily like the ways teenagers talk at sleepovers - with a weary, goofy honesty, making their strongest connections in the dark. The ending is beautiful, moving, and cathartic. A really beautiful play!

This is a play that helped get me into writing when I saw it at Boston Playwright's Theatre. I remember sitting with a class of college freshmen and my professor, and in a moment we began crying, profoundly moved.

Reading it again years later, and I only enjoyed it more, once again nearly crying. This time at my front desk. The richness of the characters, the fluidity of the dialogue, and the rawness of emotion hit me all over again. Absolutely beautiful and gutwrenching.