Alien Girls, a world premiere play developed at The Old Globe’s 2025 Powers New Voices Festival, is moving, funny, a little odd, and very vulnerable. Playwright Amy Berryman structures the piece as a time-hopping exploration of a deep friendship between two writers, from college roommates to potentially divergent futures. Also, there are puppets.
The inciting conflict of the plot is that Tiffany becomes pregnant, and Carolyn tries to be happy for her. When Carolyn’s true angst becomes public in a viral essay, the fallout fractures the foundation of their relationship. Berryman’s writing captures the contradictions of friendship: the simultaneous joy and jealousy when the other succeeds, the grief when new goals shift priorities (and schedules), and the way honesty can feel both obligatory and impossible.
While appealing to audiences of all ages (seriously, go!), this is a millennial woman’s story at its core. I mean this as high praise, not as a categorical claim. There’s a specificity to being a woman who wasn’t just told that she could have it all, but that she must. This poignant play is written from inside this experience, not simply about it. It discusses the cost of making great things (babies and/or art), the cost of committing to a path, and the cost of setting boundaries.
Berryman is a playwright, screenwriter, actor, and teaching artist. She doesn’t list herself as a poet, yet her use of poetry in the script demonstrates her diverse writing talent. Alien Girls is about two writers and explores the terror yet compulsion to share and sell your interior life, alongside the heartbreak of being misunderstood. This metatheatrical story uses a backspace key to illustrate how humans edit themselves to secure love. It invites the audience to sit in the gap between what one thinks and says.
Scenic designer Jason Sherwood conjured a carpeted, blue, round performing space not unlike a children’s museum. It feels like an otherworldly playroom, signaling permission to bring one’s strangeness. Director Jaki Bradly takes advantage of that vibe, balancing secrets and silliness, humor and heartbreak, with a light touch. The fast-paced scenes span years without losing narrative momentum.
Brittany Bradford and Emma Ramos brilliantly carry the play’s central friendship with the lived-in ease of competitive affection and unspoken truths. But it’s Karina Curet (playing Joy, Milan, and Gina) whom I dedicate this entire paragraph. Curet, whose off-Broadway credits include Practice at Playwright’s Horizon, is a Puerto Rican stage, film, and television actress. In this show, she does work that theatre uniquely demands – playing multiple well-drawn characters within a single show. When Curet shifts characters and timelines, each landing is precise, fully inhabited, and carries a new kind of humor. Curet is a luminous, versatile talent.
The poignancy of time travel is amplified by the actresses rarely changing costumes, so we see the same beautiful soul within each ever-changing woman at every age. I found the excellent execution of simple shifts proved the puppets weren’t necessary. (Though, hella cool.)
Alien Girls runs through May 10. Across the plaza courtyard is August Wilson’s Fences, directed by locally-based gem, Delicia Turner Sonnenberg. The Globe is producing two plays about the weight of lives we build alongside other people and the promises we make and break — one a canonical play by an American legend and one a world premiere by a writer on the rise. Both are phenomenal.
Their 91st season continues with the San Diego premiere of Kim’s Convenience by Ins Choi. You can already plan your summer around their Shakespeare under the stars with Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing. I’m most excited about The Hombres by Tony Meneses, a comedy with construction workers, machismo, and yoga, opening May 30.
