Set in early 2020 in Brooklyn, New York, Grand Army begins with a bang of Cardi B. lyrics, a city-wide emergency, and a flurry of notifications lighting up Grand Army High School students’ cellphones. Just a few minutes into the show’s premiere, the student body finds itself under lockdown following a suicide bombing attack in the community. In a frenzy of fear and crazed excitement, the students merge in stairwells and on classroom floors, waiting for the chaos to calm. This might seem far-reaching for a teen drama, but considering the times we’re in, it’s sadly typical.
In the ’90s, the short-lived teen drama My So-Called Life got to the heart and truth of the high school experience. More recently, HBO’s Euphoria cast a blazing light on Gen Z, a generation of bright-eyed humans witnessing more and discovering things quicker than older generations could have ever imagined. Based on her Slut: The Play, Katie Cappiello’s Grand Army joins the few projects that give us an authentic view of teenhood and the emotional saga of high school without exploiting its young people or hiding behind a glaze of Hollywood tropes.
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