By SHARON EBERSON
Prime Stage Theatre’s season of premieres continues this weekend with a commissioned work by playwright Tammy Ryan, who has adapted the National Book Award finalist Speak for the stage.
In discussing the adaptation, Ryan is quick to point out that the YA novel has frequently been near the top of the American Library Association’s banned books list since its 1999 publication. The story of consent, trauma, and healing follows a high school freshman who is finding her voice after a sexual assault.
“Some people are afraid to let teenagers, as Laurie would say, be exposed to the realities of the world,” Ryan said, quoting Speak novelist Laurie Halse Anderson.
“In some ways I think all playwriting is adaptation. You’re adapting life to the stage.”
— Award-winning playwright Tammy Ryan
When Wayne Brinda of Prime Stage contacted Ryan about adapting the book she was well aware of it — her daughters had separately brought it to her attention, and so “I had two of these books on my shelf, and I had read it at least twice.”
That call came in 2024, when the sought-after Pittsburgh-based playwright was working on another commission, The Boy King in Queens, winner of the first Boost Commission grant, and written in conversation with Leah Ryan’s play, The Wire.
Tammy Ryan was interested, but also, she was swamped. With the blessings of both Prime Stage and Anderson, Ryan got to work on Speak last year, noting that it is the latest in a string of commissioned adaptations.
“In some ways I think all playwriting is adaptation. You’re adapting life to the stage. I mean, that’s why I agreed to the timeframe, because I knew I could do it,” Ryan said.
In some ways, the story of Speak reflects Ryan’s original works, which often revolve around family and have included teenage characters. But the title refers to a character so traumatized, that she doesn’t speak.
On the page, we know Melinda mostly through the voice in her head. Two make it work, Ryan has the story told through two Melindas: Aylee Gardner, a sophomore at Point Park University, is the Melinda who can’t voice what has happened to her and how she feels, while Jacqueline Germer, who is pursuing a degree in Vocal Performance at Carnegie Mellon University, let’s us know what is going on inside Melinda’s mind.
Ryan, a fan of the novelist Anderson’s works and words, said that the play mostly hews to the novel. But in bringing Speak to the stage, “I’m taking a risk in that I’m trying a stylized theatrical approach, because I didn’t want to dramatize violence against women in the way we are typically shown this, again and again, and again and again, in movies and even theater. I’m not interested in the event of the assault. I’m interested in how you heal from that.”
With the help of a teacher, Melinda uses art to rebuild her inner strength, find her voice, and redefine her identity.
The play has 26 scenes with an intermission, with projections helping with transitions — “There’s storytelling happening in the transitions,” Ryan said — and melding the two Melindas.
Inspiration came when Ryan, director Dana Hardy Bingham and other team members attended the Center for Collaboration Science (CoLab) at Carnegie Mellon, working with Artistic Producer Kyle Haden, a projectionist, a lighting designer …
“It’s all hands on deck” for this play, Ryan said. “We got to explore, and they gave us some actors too. And one of the actors, Anne Marie Sweeney, Dana brought in and she ended up being in the show. She plays a mom, and all the other teacher roles. But we were able to explore a sort of stylistic book vocabulary of the piece. I only had 30 pages written when we went to CoLab, and then everything I wrote came out of that collaboration.”
The cast, a mix of local high school and college students and professionals, includes Milena Casciani (Rachel/Ensemble), Grace Gouwens (Heather/Ensemble),Jeff Johnston (Mr. Freeman), Sadie Karashin (Nicole/Ensemble/choreographer), Eamonn Mcelfresh (Andy/Ensemble), Zora Rose (Ivy/Ensemble), and Evan Vay (David/Ensemble).
“Dana is really wonderful with these young actors because she taught school for 20 years. She treats them as creative equals, and … they’ve just jumped in with both feet. And so that part of this process has been really gratifying, because I’m a writer who loves to be in the room,” Ryan said. “I love that collaborative process.”
Speak was less than a week away from opening night, on May 1 at Prime Stage’s home, the New Hazlett Theater, as Ryan spoke. It was tech day, when cast and crew “will move in and everything’s going to fall apart, and we’ll put it back together. And then the audience comes in. That’s the final ingredient.”
Until then, there was the satisfaction of meeting the moment, staying as close to the novel as possible, and keeping in mind Prime Stage’s mission.
“It is, as they say, to bring literature to life. That’s how I went into it,” Ryan said. “Now everybody in the room is happy. It’s all working for us, but now how the energy that the audience brings and how they respond to it is going to tell me so much more about how all of this is working. And that is the unknown right now. I mean, I trust audiences to get it and to respond, but we’ll see.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Prime Stage Theatre presents the premiere of Speak at the New Hazlett Theater, May 1-3, 8-9, 2026. Speak author Laurie Halse Anderson will be on hand for a post-show discussion after on Saturday, May 2. Tickets: https://newhazletttheater.org/events/speak/
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Our Posts, Preview, Show Previews
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