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Bite Me

  • Eliana Pipes
  • Full Length Play, Drama, New Millennium/21st Century
  • 1M, 1F
  • ISBN: 9780573710926

When two teens – a privileged white boy and an overachieving Black girl – find themselves together in a storage closet, the heat soon boils over. Bite Me explores the drama (and trauma) of trying to fit in at high school, and the unfinished business that lingers over a decade later.

More information

Description

  • Full Length Play
  • Drama
  • 90 minutes

  • Time Period: New Millennium/21st Century
  • Target Audience: Adult
  • Set Requirements: Interior Set
  • Cautions: Alcohol, Mild Adult Themes, Strong Language, Smoking

  • Performance Group:
  • College Theatre / Student, Blackbox / Second Stage /Fringe Groups, Professional Theatre
Nathan is ditching class when he stumbles on Melody crying in a storage closet – he’s a white boy with family money and dangerous habits, she’s the lone Black girl on campus, overachieving academically and battling the isolation. They form an unexpected bond and it’s not long before the heat between them boils over.

Bite Me explores the drama (and trauma) they face in high school, and the unfinished business waiting for them at their reunion a decade later.
REVIEWS:

"A brutally honest two-hander about adolescence and its aftermath."

 Lighting & Sound American

"An engaging, thought-provoking story of two teens who escape from the anarchy of their youth and find success on their terms, but not without scars... Pipes has written an excellent play; she draws the disparate socio-economic and racial lines between Nathan and Melody with a fine pen. The arc and landscape of their friendship and its ultimate struggle is carefully wrought and effective."

 Theater Scene

"In Bite Me, by the playwright Eliana Pipes, the reasons a studious girl can’t afford to slip up while her crush has the privilege to slack off hum beneath their budding friendship like the drone of a fluorescent bulb... Pipes is also interested in how race, class and gender can play a role in determining who needs to hustle for the opportunities that others freely squander."

 The New York Times

"Pipes is a tough, unsentimental reporter of the details – Adderall, alienation, bullying, whiskey, cigarettes and self-harm – of being young and troubled in the early 2000s... [she] carefully lays a snare that entangles her protagonists in a web of need and grievance from which there may be no escape."

 Lighting & Sound America

Premiere Production: Bite Me premiered off-Broadway at WP Theater on September 23, 2023. Directed by Rebecca Martínez, the production featured David Garelik as Nathan and Malika Samuel as Melody.

Characters

  • Casting: 1M, 1F
  • Casting Attributes: Strong Role for Leading Woman (Star Vehicle), Role(s) for Black Actor(s), Strong Role for Leading Man (Star Vehicle)

  • MELODY – 16, Black, woman. Smart and outspoken (but never at the cost of being polite), a “good kid.” Straight A’s, a member of every student organization. She has a very organized backpack. Deeply isolated. This high school is not in her district; she lives in a city closer to downtown than to the suburbs and makes a long commute by bus each morning and night. She sells her homework under the table to other kids. Lately she’s been crying through lunch.

  • MELODY at 27 in Act Two – Cold, self-protective, sharp-witted. Melody has become a confident and successful career woman, although navigating an elite university and the corporate world has hardened her spirit. She comes into the closet to flaunt her success, and to prove to herself that she’s grown beyond the person she used to be in high school.

  • NATHAN – 16, white, man. Charmingly arrogant and daring, a “bad kid.” He can be perceptive, thoughtful and kind, but he makes a point of doing it sparingly and only for people who’ve “earned” it. He has burgeoning alcoholism born from opportunity and angst. He comes from money but pickpockets for sport.

  • NATHAN at 27 in Act Two – Warm, soft-spoken, unassuming. In the years after high school, Nathan hit rock bottom and undertook a humbling journey through substance abuse recovery in the 12-step program. He thinks of Melody fondly and comes into the closet to make amends and to reconnect.

    • Available Material

    Name Price
    Bite Me Script This is optional. Order Now

    Nathan is ditching class when he stumbles on Melody crying in a storage closet – he’s a white boy with family money and dangerous habits, she’s the lone Black girl on campus, overachieving academically and battling the isolation. They form an unexpected bond and it’s not long before the heat between them boils over.

    Bite Me     explores the drama (and trauma) they face in high school, and the unfinished business waiting for them at their reunion a decade later.

    		$24.95

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