Last night, Tavi Gevinson announced via Twitter that she'll soon star in her first Broadway play, a revival of Kenneth Lonergan's acclaimed 1996 drama This Is Our Youth. The play will debut in Gevinson's hometown of Chicago, at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, before heading to New York in mid-August for previews. The production will have its full, 20-week run on The Great White Way from September through January. Audiences in both cities can expect obscured views due to the many flower crowns in attendance.
This Is Our Youth centers on three "wealthy, articulate pot-smoking teenagers" living on Manhattan's Upper West Side in 1982. In it, Gevinson will play Jessica, an “anxiously insightful” fashion student. The play, which was first produced Off Broadway in 1996 by The New Group, will also star Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin.
This represents another leap forward for the 17-year-old Gevinson, who also serves as editor-in-chief of the thoroughly inspiring Rookie (which, full disclosure/humblebrag, this author used to write for). She's also previously proved her acting chops as a luminous presence in last year's Nicole Holofcener film Enough Said, alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini. Gevinson must be getting pretty sick by now of reading journalists' shock and awe over the depth and multitude of her talents, but, like, really. This girl is heading for EGOT territory any day now.