Since its first performance at Melbourne's La Mama Theatre in 2022, Trophy Boys has been restaged at Melbourne's fortyfivedownstairs, garnered rave reviews, had a national tour, been nominated for four Green Room Awards, and won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best New Work in 2024.

It's all the more impressive when you consider Mattana began writing the play, her debut, in which she also starred, in 2021, when she was just 20 years old.

★★★★★

The script is powerful and ferociously intelligent; the performances witty and exuberant and, crucially, empathetic (the boys’ behaviour might be grotesque and hypocritical, and sometimes caricatured, but the actors don’t dehumanise their subjects) and all elements of design, including use of a traverse stage, promote a voyeuristic intimacy. 

By the time those nominations were announced, Taymor was already preparing “Trophy Boys.” A commercial producer had seen the play in its debut in Melbourne, Australia, and had immediately thought of Taymor for it. Taymor read it. “It freaked me out,” she said. “It was so intense and funny and disturbing.” But she understood that “The Outsiders” and “John Proctor” had readied her for it.

“That’s where I started to realize, Oh, I need to see this thing through with adolescence,” she said. “I’m uniquely prepared for this task.”

MCC Theater has found the cast and creative team for its upcoming U.S. premiere run of Emmanuelle Mattana's Trophy Boys, set to play the Off-Broadway company's Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater beginning June 5 ahead of a June 25 opening night. 

Tony winner Danya Taymor (John Proctor is the Villain, The Outsiders) is directing.

Mattana will star in her own work as Owen, with Terry Hu (Never Have I Ever) as David, Louisa Jacobson (The Gilded Age) as Jared, and Esco Jouléy (Wolf Play) as Scott. Casting is by The Telsey Office's Charlie Hano.

Danya Taymor, the 2024 Tony Award-winning director of The Outsiders, will follow up her Broadway triumph with a new play at Off-Broadway's MCC Theater. Next summer, Taymor will direct the American premiere of Trophy Boys, by Emmanuelle Mattana. The play will begin previews June 5, 2025, with an opening night set for June 24. The show will run until July 13. 

★★★★★

If you had asked me what I thought the next canonical Australian text would be before I watched Trophy Boys, I certainly wouldn’t have pegged a play that features a sign boldly emblazoned with the words 'Feminism has failed women' set against a backdrop of portraits of “powerful women leaders... The success of the show is hinged on Mattana’s meticulously crafted script... (her) writing skillfully balances the comedy with a much darker conversation, which creates scenes of tension that culminate effortlessly into the play’s unnerving ending. 

Videoland, from newcomer Pikelet Pictures, has taken out the top prize of ‘Best Series’ for the Comedy Competition at this year’s Series Mania – the world’s most highly regarded television festival, which was attended by a record breaking 98,000 guests in France last week... Mattana [whose father is a French migrant to Australia] became an audience favourite when she introduced herself in her second language as a “lesbian Timothee Chalamet” at the premiere of Videoland earlier in the week. 

Mattana has the kind of self-possessed intelligence that raises the IQ of an entire room and leaves it crackling with big-brain energy... [Trophy Boys] is an exemplary instance of how art can advance and improve public debate in a thoroughly entertaining way. It’s as impressive (and funny) a debut as I’ve seen in 20 years as a theatre critic, and the debate it covers – the causes of misogyny, sexual assault and gendered violence – couldn’t be more relevant or urgent.

The performativity of gender, for Mattana, is heightened during teenage years, when boys are coming into their physical and societal power, testing the limits of what they can get away with, and with whom. There’s a grotesqueness to puberty and all of its sudden, seemingly uncontrollable changes and urges. The boys of the play exist in an uncomfortable, ever-shifting space between childhood (where their tussles can simply land them in a time out) and manhood (where their crimes can land them in handcuffs). Mattana, who identifies as nonbinary and uses she/they pronouns, finds a comedic richness in non-cis-male bodies inhabiting the absurd, and sometimes disturbing, masculinity of teenage boys.

Sydney-based lawyer Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) travels interstate to visit struggling Melburnian Jessie (Melissa Gan), to rekindle their friendship and go on an adventure through the city.

But the vibe of the film will be intensely relatable for any person who has tried to revive a long-term relationship with a long-distance best friend. The connection of shared experience between Em and Jessie remains, but how they've changed over time creates friction for the young women.

After several successful seasons in venues across the country, Mattana believes Trophy Boys continues to resonate with audiences as it reflects the modern world. “Trophy Boys dares to look at misogyny in a new way, through a satirical lens: it’s riotous, irreverent, and the performances are infectious,” she said.

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“As we grapple as a society with how to combat violence, I think it takes this kind of approach to change the way we see things and invite a new way of thinking.” 

The excitement derives chiefly from the mountain-goat surefootedness of the playwright, Emmanuelle Mattana, who, with a muscular control of rhythm, scan and tone, manages at every turn to avoid obviousness. To embrace nuance and humour, goodwill, fellow feeling, mess, shame, hope. To allow an audience to inhabit – by turn – the bodies on stage in a complicated and yet enlightening way, even as those bodies surprise and play tricks on us... To see a writer – so young – attempt so much, and succeed so lavishly? There is no pleasure like it. Bravo.

- Annabel Crabb

★★★★★

The play holds an instant appeal for any person who has dabbled in debating, its props and jokes nostalgic. But its incisive commentary on how misogyny contorts itself to escape the spotlight rings true for all audience members. Whether you find the prep room familiar or alien, poking fun at private school boys is a universal treat. 

"I may not have been alive in the ’90s,” said star Emmanuelle Mattana, “but Videoland is a series about the timeless journey of finding yourself, coming of age and coming out. It’s such a joy to work on a project that celebrates the rich history of sapphic cinema, whilst joining the cannon itself, and doing it all with playful, heart-warming, pastel-hued nostalgic charm. It has been an honour to work with an immensely talented cast and crew to bring to life a work so close to my heart.” 

That message is a universal one, but also deeply personal for Mattana. Shortly after Trophy Boys debuted in Australia, a boy from their high school messaged them on social media. Though eight years had passed since they’d seen each other, he asked Mattana out for coffee and to swap stories about their experiences. As an alum, he knew that their school was rife with misogyny.

“Young men can be so powerful when they’re brave enough to reflect on the ways that their behavior is harmful."

“This is coming from the deepest place of loving men,” they say. “And demanding better of them.”

We've all had the kind of day, night and weekend — one at least, likely several — that Em and Jessie navigate in Fwends. The former is a junior lawyer in Sydney with a workaholic's dedication to her career, in no small part because of the effort it took to get there. The latter is an ex-stripper who spent time in Europe before returning to Melbourne, and is fresh from a breakup. They haven't seen each other for years when Jessie meets Em at Southern Cross Station, so catching up is built into their wanderings. Step by step, story by story, they mosey and meander and babble and banter, and it feels to them — and to viewers — that anything can happen.

“The opportunity during Pride Month to be doing drag and a show like this is so cool,” says Jacobson, “and to investigate gender as performance and dive deep into exploring the more masculine parts of myself.” She also notes that this kind of drag is the reverse of what is usually represented in popular culture. “We don’t see it as often as we see queens, you know? It’s less digestible. People don’t always understand how to receive it. So we were batting up a little bit with that, but it’s been really fun.”​

Scraping together every last dollar, Somerville decided to shoot a comic drama about two friends walking the streets of Melbourne as they grapple with the issues facing women in their 20s. It paid off - Fwends was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival, won the Caligari Prize for “stylistically and thematically innovative film” and is about to begin an Australian festival run. It is among the first titles announced today for the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) in June and will also screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) in August... 

A lot has changed since I started writing, but a lot remains the same… or even worse.

As I write this with our national tour looming, a private school in Melbourne has suspended its students for describing female students as “unrapeable”. Meanwhile, over 30 women have been killed by male violence already this year.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile.

And yet, meanwhile, we’ve managed to get Trophy Boys in high school curriculums. We’re doing Q&As with students, and we’re being produced by one of the very women who came forward against Christian Porter to support her late friend at great personal cost.​

Enjoying its Australian premiere at the Queer Screen Film Festival this week before streaming on Netflix from Sunday, it stars Mustangs FC lead Emmanuelle Mattana as video store clerk Hayley, furtively working her way through a handwritten list of queer films... It's a lush tribute to love's first blush, with Mattana shining as a young woman haltingly emerging from the closet... Hopefully a second season will emerge, so we can follow all the characters on their shared journey.

“Although the competition was fierce,  and the debate agonising, Emmanuelle’s connection to the writerly principles of Practical Aesthetics, along with their eagerness to engage and improve their craft made them the winner of the scholarship,” the judges said.

“Emmanuelle’s ensemble experience provides them with a sound foundation and awareness that is necessary when working collaboratively. We are honoured to support Emmanuelle in their aim to develop as a performer and devise new work, and look forward to seeing the impact they will make in the industry”.