←Recommendations of The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood

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.

I wanted to stay with these girls forever. I love them all. Izzy’s final monologue was heart wrenching and beautiful. What it means to be a young girl, becoming a woman, heartbreakingly captured.

I feel as though I could spent countless more hours just listening in on Rockwell's characters--that's how real and how interesting they are. The time I spent with them while reading "The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood" was painful and beautiful, moving and heartfelt, and truly human and nuanced: qualities that are missing in so many stories of teenage girls, but are incredibly well-done in this play. I would love to see these characters take life in production!

An empathetic and warm-hearted look at the lives of five girls at the margins of society. Carefully observed and generous in spirit. This was the featured play on an episode of Boston Podcast Players podcast. https://www.bostonpodcastplayers.com/updates/2019/12/4/the-tragic-ecsta…

This is a piece that hurts in the best ways. Rockwell's characters are delightfully human, making their traumas and experiences all the more difficult to stomach. A wonderful play about with a hopeful and bittersweet end.

Through just a few deftly rendered and three dimensional characters, Rockwell paints a vivid world that so beautifully and heartbreakingly demonstrates the oppressive structures and institutions that young women continually encounter. Rather than miring the narrative in only the collective trauma of these women, this play brilliantly shows the ways people can come together to survive and heal in limiting circumstances. This nuanced piece explores each character's story with great tenderness, humor, and care. Hope to see a production of this soon!

Full of humor, pain, and love, Kira crafts a magnificently poetic play about the pitfalls of a system desperately in need of reform, and the womxn who survive and succumb in this system. Never pretentious, always powerful, Kira has struck a beautiful balance and crafted an exceptional play. This play is perfect for late teen actors and for audiences of all ages. Brilliant.