About the Play:

Be Aggressive has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

Be Aggressive is a full-length comedic drama by Annie Weisman. The world of cheerleading is more diabolical thank you think. "Bring it On" meets "Six Feet Under" in Be Aggressive, a hilarious black comedy about two high school cheerleaders who tackle the loss of innocence, and search for the perfect cheer.

Be Aggressive takes place in the sunny community of Vista Del Sol in southern California. Sandy beaches. Avocado-lined streets. But for seventeen-year-old cheerleader Laura, everything changes when her mother is killed in a hit-and-run accident while jogging along a narrow road near their home, and she is thrust into the role of caregiver for her precocious younger sister, Hannah, and her brittle father, Phil. Escape comes in the form of a ferocious fellow cheerleader. Leslie has a brochure about the Spirit Institute of the South, a two-week intensive where they can learn real cheer, the kind with Bible belt intensity. All they need is two weeks and a thousand bucks. Leslie gets her money easily, manipulating her overwrought single mother, Judy. But Laura has it harder. Her father is a consultant on a new and controversial freeway project, and he needs her home, taking care of Hannah. Desperate, Laura finally steals the money, and she and Leslie sneak off. Armed with only a Mobil card, the girls must face the open road together while a frantic Phil and Judy must cope with missing daughters. Once a part of the freeway protests, Judy now takes Phil's side, and in each other, they see the mutual pain of a California dream lost. Hannah longs for her sister, and some order, to return. When Laura and Leslie finally arrive at their destination, a terrible realization awaits. The brochure that Leslie read was from twenty years ago, a relic she believed in out of desperation. In the void of the abandoned schoolyard, Laura finally confronts her mother's loss. She's ready to go home. Back at home, Phil, Judy and Leslie stand together at the freeway opening, cheering as they cut the ribbon. Laura refuses, taking Hannah to the beach to write things in the sand. It's a dangerous, shifting place they live in, but facing the ocean they see hope and renewal there too.

Be Aggressive premiered in 2001 at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, and went on to productions at Dallas Theatre Center, Chicago's Rivenden Theatre, Austin's State Theatre, and others. It was a finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize honouring the best English-language women writers worldwide. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 1 male, plus extras

What people say:

"In Be Aggressive…peppy chants become slogans of anger, loss and loneliness…Weisman demonstrates a talent for language, an ambitious theatricality and a sharp satirical wit that provide limitless hope for her writing future…filled with lingual gymnastics…stylized rapid-fire dialogue…Weisman is a young playwright to watch…sparklingly original and fun." — Variety

"Playwright Annie Weisman is as promised: a new, exciting, and unique voice in the American theatre…." — Backstage

"It's that double-edged attitude—closely observed satire and affectionate understanding…that give Weisman's writing such surprising resonance and sophistication…Weisman's vision of adolescence is unerring…." — San Diego Union-Tribune

About the Playwright:

Annie Weisman is an American television writer-producer (About A Boy, Desperate Housewives) and playwright. She wrote plays at Williams College in Massachusetts and during her junior year studies abroad at Oxford in England, then gradually crafting her present life as creator, executive producer and showrunner of Apple's dramedy series Physical.