Oldster Recommends: Jill Sobule's "F*ck 7th Grade"

Don't miss this tender, righteous, funny rock musical at The Wild Project in Manhattan—sold out now, but with several new dates added in January and February.

Get tickets to Jill Sobule’s F*ck 7th Grade.

Readers,

Last week I took myself to see Jill Sobule’s F*ck 7th Grade, a perfect balm for my awkward, tortured inner-13-year-old. I loved the show so much that I’m making all my friends who are Gen X and Generation Jones go see it. I thought I’d also recommend it to you, in case you either live in or near New York City, or plan to visit in January or February, when new dates have been added. (Performances through the rest of 2022 are sold out.)

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Oh, my god, this show. Junior-high-Sari felt perfectly seen, validated, and uplifted. I laughed, I cried…I bought a tee shirt at the concession, then slept in it. (Okay, full disclosure: I’d forgotten to pack a night shirt for my stay at Madison LES, an inexpensive Chinatown hotel I’d found on Hotel Tonight.)

Ready for bed in my cool new shirt.

Directed by Lisa Peterson, with a book by Liza Birkenmeier, F*ck 7th Grade is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule’s poignant autobiographical account of: surviving the cruelties of middle school in the early '70s as a tomboy and nerd; tiptoeing her way out of the closet; becoming an MTV sensation in the mid-90s for her catchy pop tune, “I Kissed a Girl”; then getting dropped by the record label that had insisted on sanitizing the song of any lesbian implications, making her realize she’d sold her soul for nothing.

Sobule is joined onstage by Nini Camps, Kristen Ellis-Henderson and Julie Wolf, who function not only as Sobule’s band, “Secrets of the Vatican,” but also as actors, playing various characters from her past. (Wolf is also the musical director.)

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The story unfolds over 90 delightful minutes. You can’t help but fall in love with young Sobule, as she is presented in storytelling and song. I ate up every tale and musical number, dancing in my seat and singing along—but not feeling like a weirdo about that, as I might have elsewhere, because just about everyone else in the audience was singing and dancing, too.

I had no idea how much I needed to see F*ck 7th Grade until it was recommended to me by Mike Albo, a writer and performer I’ve long admired (and who I recently interviewed about the writing life and his forthcoming young adult novel, Another Dimension of Us, out in January).

Mike had read my memoir, And You May Find Yourself… Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Wierdo, and said he found F*ck 7th Grade to be very much in conversation with it, especially the parts where I wrote about hard times I’d been through in junior high and high school—like when I was ostracized by some mean girls.

Order my memoir.

Sobule and I were ostracized for different reasons: She was queer and weird; I was/am straight, but also very weird, a sensitive musical theater geek out of step in many ways with the other kids I grew up around. (You can read more about it in a chapter of my book called “Mean Girls.”) I found myself relating to so much of her experience of feeling like an outsider and struggling to embody, then stand up for, a truer version of herself that the “normal” kids couldn’t understand or accept. I think other “weirdos” loosely in my age group will strongly identify, too. Actually, I think this show will resonate with anyone of any age who ever felt like they didn’t fit in, for any reason.

I’m so happy Mike recommended this show to me. I so enjoyed it that I’m going back in February, taking Brian along with me. Not only will that mean I get to enjoy it a second time; I also get to additionally support The Wild Project, a wonderful eco-friendly non-profit theater in the East Village that nurtures and supports emerging artists.

Now I’m passing the recommendation on to you. (If you don’t believe me, check out this rave review in the New York Times.) Go see Jill Sobule’s F*ck 7th Grade! You won’t be sorry.