The cast of Initiative (Photo: Joan Marcus)
Initiative
By Deirdre Donovan
Initiative sweeps through four tumultuous years in a nowhere town on the California coast, where seven teenagers cling to one another as they stumble into friendship, first love, and the aching question of who they’re allowed to become. Guided with tender, clear-eyed direction by Emma Rosa Went, Else Went’s sprawling five-hour epic at The Public captures the beauty and the bruise of growing up at the dawn of the new millennium.
Dungeons & Dragons (playwright Else once worked at a gaming shop!) is the production’s imaginative engine, giving shape to the teens’ inner worlds. Riley, an aspiring writer, (Greg Cuellar) serves as Dungeon Master to a tight-knit cohort that includes brainy Clara (Olivia Rose Barresi), mercurial Kendall (Andrea Lopez Alvarez), the New York transplant Ty (Harrison Densmore), and the affable Em (Christopher Dylan White). As their campaign unfolds, each teen steps into the heroic persona they long to inhabit, navigating quests and crises that echo the real hopes and fears stirring in Coastal Podunk. The game becomes a rehearsal for adulthood—a space where they can explore uncharted terrain, test their courage, and take risks they can’t yet attempt in the daylight world.
For theatergoers puzzling over the play’s title, the answer lies in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. In the game, “initiative” determines the order in which characters take their turns in battle—setting the sequence of action each time a new conflict begins.
Though the cast members are all in their thirties, their performances draw deeply—whether consciously or not—from their own early-millennial coming-of-age, giving each episode a vividly lived-in authenticity. But the audience, too, is asked to step into the journey; as playwright Else Went writes in the program note, “I invite you, as you meet this play, to take seriously your own adolescence: your own first friendships, first loves, first great wants and fears, losses and discoveries. It is a brave act to step into such a big world and become yourself.”
Olivia Rose Barresi, Greg Cuellar (Photo: Joan Marcus)
Clara and Riley—inseparable best friends—command the lion’s share of the play’s dialogue, and they seem the pair most capable of sustaining a relationship grounded in honesty and respect. But when Clara gently signals that she hopes Riley will take her to the Homecoming dance, he first sidesteps the suggestion before, in a flash of unvarnished truth, telling her he’s gay and recoils at the idea of going as her date. Their exchange, tender and awkward in equal measure, reveals the fragile terrain they’re navigating:
Clara: “I feel like our love, or whatever it is, is out of balance. Are we just friends, Riley? Because I don’t know if that’s all I want.”
Riley: “I’m gay, Clara. I’m gay and I don’t want to go dancing.”
Clara: “Oh. Well that doesn’t sound very gay.”
Riley: “I’ve never said. To anyone.”
Clara: “I’m glad you did. I kinda thought maybe, you know?”
Although Riley’s revelation draws a clear boundary between them as potential lovers, it does nothing to diminish their deep affection or mutual regard. And when Clara is later traumatized on a late-night date with Lo (Carson Higgins) — who becomes uncomfortably aggressive — Riley is the one who helps her steady herself, while also cautioning her to be more careful in the future.
The play also evokes the early-millennial embrace of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), that once-ubiquitous portal for teenage confessions and late-night chatter. Though AIM has long vanished, S. Katy Tucker’s inventive projection design brings it vividly back to life. To fully track the play’s emotional and narrative arcs, the audience must follow its quicksilver shifts between onscreen text and spoken dialogue, each enriching the other.
Christopher Akerlind’s ever-shifting lighting palette gives each scene its own atmospheric charge. Whether it’s the glowing orb that hangs above Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ set like a comet, or the dusky half-light on a bridge where two teens wrestle with life’s Big Questions (“Do you think we’ll do anything worthwhile with our lives? Is it even possible?”), Akerlind’s illumination consistently deepens the play’s emotional terrain.
Olivia Rose Barresi, Greg Cuellar (Photo: Joan Marcus)
Initiative isn’t without its shortcomings. Not every member of its sprawling ensemble is fully realized: the sassy Kendall, introduced as a precocious eighth-grader, seems to materialize without much backstory, and Tony (Jamie Sanders) and Ty remain more like outlines than fully dimensional teens.
If Initiative occasionally stumbles in its breadth, it more than compensates with heart, imagination, and emotional clarity. As these seven teens fumble toward identity, connection, and purpose, the play gently urges us to reflect on our own first steps into the unknown—and to honor the messy, glorious work of becoming ourselves.
At The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street
For more information, visit www.publictheater.org.
Running time: 5 hours with two intermissions.
Through December 7, 2025
