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 available here
Article by Sharon Eberson for On Stage Pittsburgh 4/28
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.
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.”
Review by Sharon Eberson for Onstage Pittsburgh
the power of creative expression in Prime Stage Theatre’s adaptation of Speak. (Image: Laura Slovesko.)
…The work, an adaptation by Tammy Ryan of Laurie Halse Anderson’s popular 1999 YA novel, was commissioned by Prime Stage Theatre, and made its debut on April 30 at the New Hazlett Theater.
The play cleverly solves the problem of a protagonist whose words fail her by presenting two Melindas: Aylee Gardner, a sophomore at Point Park University, is the Melinda who everyone can see, unless she’s escaping school pressures in a janitor’s room, and Jacqueline Germer, a Carnegie Mellon junior, is “Melinda 2,” always at her side, encouraging, supportive and free to be funny and fierce.
As the Melindas, Gardner and Germer have a synchronicity. They wear similar colors, although Gardner’s outfits are boxier and muted, and their connection is never confusing, and always most welcome. That relationship, between the girl Melinda is, the one she was in the before times, and who she can become to move forward, is the heart of Speak.