Stage Notes: American Girls

American Girls, written by Hilary Bettis and directed by Jeff Cohen, is the story of two 14-year-old Midwestern girls, played by Bettis and Kira Sternbach. In Bettis' first play, she draws upon her experiences growing up alongside Bible-toting classmates and as a strip club masseuse to fantasize what might happen to two innocent teenagers, raised on a steady diet of a Christian love for Jesus, who desire the easy fame that today's pop culture seems to promise. One of the play's lines is, "Jesus would not have made us as hot as we are if he didn't have a plan for us."

Playwright and actor Bettis feels she has no problem looking 14 for the performance, explaining that "I've been accused of having a fake I.D. before." As an elementary school student in Colorado Springs, Bettis hung out with classmates who took their Bibles to class and proclaimed daily their love for Jesus, but, she says, "the very next year we all wanted to become famous, and have sex with boys, even though we were still testifying." After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles to become an actor and then to New York, where she did some off-off-Broadway shows, but felt that she had a better chance at getting parts she wanted if she wrote them herself. And after working as a "massage and back-rub girl" at a local strip club for five months, she said, "I got a lot of dialogue, a lifetime of dialogue.”

The resulting play follows these two "really geeky awkward girls,” Bettis explains, who manage to finagle their way into a strip club and get up and dance on amateur night. "They have never gotten that much attention, or felt that much power before," she says. A man claiming to be a "talent scout" takes them for dinner and an "audition.” Much more happens, but, like a good exotic dance, you'll have to see for yourself.

45th St. Theater, 354 W. 45th St., (212) 868-4444. Previews Apr. 3, opens Apr. 6. Wed.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. $55.

Photo by Carol Rosegg