Seat Filler: Best NYC Theater of 2009

9. Children at Play
Jordan Seavey wasn’t playing around with this very adult play at the Lower East Side’s little Living Theatre. The out playwright’s challenging, shocking, and profoundly disturbing work followed five gifted and talented students who remain friends through an eventful junior high and high school experience defined by eating disorders, molestation, experimentation, and more. Seavey, who previously tackled gay-bias crime in The Truth Will Out, adeptly explored the dark and the delightful sides of shifting adolescent sexuality with a masturbation sequence behind a backlit curtain, a revealing game of truth or dare, and a Sybilesque argument between two boyfriends played by the same actor.