Stupid Kids is a play by John C. Russell, first published by Dramatists Play Service

Dramatists Play Service

Established in 1936 by members of the Dramatists Guild and the Society for Authors' Representatives, Dramatists Play Service, Inc. is a theatrical publishing and licensing house...

, Inc. of New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and first performed in 1991. Very similar in tone, plot, and characters to the film Rebel Without a Cause

Rebel Without a Cause

Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...

, the play follows four students at Joe McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy

Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...

 High.

Subsequent to its New York run, it played in Seattle

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

 and Boston and was well-reviewed by Curtain-Up.

Plot

Jim has a crush on Judy and Judy's boyfriend Buzz is a popular jock. After a police raid on a rave

Rave

Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...

, Jim makes friends with Neechee (a fey kid who has nicknamed himself after Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

) while Judy befriends punkish riot grrrl

Riot grrrl

Riot grrrl was an underground feminist punk movement based in Washington, DC, Olympia, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and the greater Pacific Northwest which existed in the early to mid-1990s, and it is often associated with third-wave feminism...

Kimberly. As Jim and Judy pursue each other through the unpleasant social procedures of high school, abandoning their rebellious nature in favor of comfortable conformity, Neechee and Kimberly fall unhappily in love with them—Neechee with Jim, Kimberly with Judy. Ultimately, their experience alienates them even further from the mainstream, and from the objects of their affection.

Characters

Jim Stark - a masculine, disaffected and apparently rebellious teenager who is new in town and intrigued by Judy

Judy Noonan - a feminine, provocative, and apparently rebellious teenager who is intrigued by Jim

John "Neechee" Crawford - a young gay outcast who is desperately in love with Jim

Jane "Kimberly" Willis - a young gay outcast who is desperately in love with Judy