Bite Me
by Eliana Pipes

Name: Bite Me
Brand: Eliana Pipes
SKU: 9780573710926
Rating: 4.55 (11 reviews)

Off-Broadway

Highlights

Female

Male

90 mins Present Day Role(s) for Black Actor(s) Interior Set Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes

Synopsis

Nathan is ditching class when he stumbles on Melody crying in a storage closet – he’s a white boy with family money and dangerous habits, she’s the lone Black girl on campus, overachieving academically and battling the isolation.

They form an unexpected bond and it’s not long before the heat between them boils over.

Bite Me explores the drama (and trauma) they face in high school, and the unfinished business waiting for them at their reunion a decade later.

Press Reviews

"An engaging, thought-provoking story of two teens who escape from the anarchy of their youth and find success on their terms, but not without scars... Pipes has written an excellent play; she draws the disparate socio-economic and racial lines between Nathan and Melody with a fine pen. The arc and landscape of their friendship and its ultimate struggle is carefully wrought and effective."
— Theater Scene

"In Bite Me, by the playwright Eliana Pipes, the reasons a studious girl can’t afford to slip up while her crush has the privilege to slack off hum beneath their budding friendship like the drone of a fluorescent bulb... Pipes is also interested in how race, class and gender can play a role in determining who needs to hustle for the opportunities that others freely squander."
— The New York Times

"Pipes is a tough, unsentimental reporter of the details – Adderall, alienation, bullying, whiskey, cigarettes and self-harm – of being young and troubled in the early 2000s... [she] carefully lays a snare that entangles her protagonists in a web of need and grievance from which there may be no escape."
— Lighting & Sound America

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
MELODY 16, Black, woman. Smart and outspoken (but never at the cost of being polite), a “good kid.” Straight A’s, a member of every student organization. She has a very organized backpack. Deeply isolated. This high school is not in her district; she lives in a city closer to downtown than to the suburbs and makes a long commute by bus each morning and night. She sells her homework under the table to other kids. Lately she’s been crying through lunch.	female	—	16, Black, woman. Smart and outspoken (but never at the cost of being polite), a “good kid.” Straight A’s, a member of every student organization. She has a very organized backpack. Deeply isolated. This high school is not in her district; she lives in a city closer to downtown than to the suburbs and makes a long commute by bus each morning and night. She sells her homework under the table to other kids. Lately she’s been crying through lunch.
NATHAN 16, white, man. Charmingly arrogant and daring, a “bad kid.” He can be perceptive, thoughtful and kind, but he makes a point of doing it sparingly and only for people who’ve “earned” it. He has burgeoning alcoholism born from opportunity and angst. He comes from money but pickpockets for sport.	male	—	16, white, man. Charmingly arrogant and daring, a “bad kid.” He can be perceptive, thoughtful and kind, but he makes a point of doing it sparingly and only for people who’ve “earned” it. He has burgeoning alcoholism born from opportunity and angst. He comes from money but pickpockets for sport.