Two Girls

Two Girls is a one-act play by Eliya Smith for two performers, billed as a dark comedy. It is built from verbatim interviews about a single video, 2 Girls 1 Cup. That was the nickname of a trailer for a 2007 Brazilian fetish film, and it became famous mostly through reaction clips: from mid-October 2007, video sites filled up with recordings of people watching it for the first time.

As of October 2026, Chloe Claudel and Juliana Sass are the two performers. The video is the subject, not the spectacle: the play does not reenact it and does not try to dramatize the two women who appear in it. Its attention goes to the people who watched. They recall what stuck with them from the clip, and they decide as they go how personal to get about their own sexuality.

Cherry Lane Theatre presents the world premiere in the West Village, as a limited run. The piece was created with The Goat Exchange, a performance company founded in 2016 that works across disciplines, and developed by Cherry Lane.

There is no plot in the usual sense. The play moves through a sequence of conversations in which men look back on the video and its impact. The interviewees are anonymous, and the program thanks them without naming them.

As of October 2026, Chloe Claudel and Juliana Sass share the parts, and they appear under their own first names, Chloe and Juliana. Between them they switch back and forth between the interviewer, called Eliya, and the young men she questions, so the audience watches two people trade places between asking and answering.

The subject matter is the video's reach rather than the video itself. Smith says many of the people she spoke with first saw it when they were very young, and she was not looking for villains. The tone, in Cherry Lane's words, is darkly funny.

The dialogue is verbatim. Smith's starting point was an interest in the male gaze, and she approached it by interviewing men; what the performers say onstage is drawn from men who have seen the clip.

She picked this video as an entry point because so many people had seen it. From there the interviews open onto bigger ground: the body, disgust and sex, and the question of why people keep looking at what draws them in as their sexuality develops. In interviews about the project, Smith has described the larger subject as what internet porn left behind for the generations who grew up with it, and how that carries into the way people treat one another.

Smith is a writer from Ohio and a member of EST Youngblood. At The Goat Exchange she is a company member and the resident playwright. Her Off-Broadway credits are Grief Camp at Atlantic Theater Company, which in 2025 was her Off-Broadway debut, and Dad Don't Read This at Greenwich House Theater, which ran in summer 2026. Her other plays include Deadclass, Ohio, made with The Goat Exchange, and Memonica at HERE Arts Center.

The producing structure is a partnership. Cherry Lane Theatre is the lead producer, with Eloise Lynton as the Cherry Lane Theatre producer and Kerrigan Quenemoen as the company producer for The Goat Exchange. General management is by Mott/Fischer Productions, and Iron Bloom Creative Production handles production management. Sarina Rivera is the props supervisor. The program also credits a Head of A24 Live on the Cherry Lane staff.

Cherry Lane is owned by A24, which bought the building in March 2023 in partnership with Taurus Investment Holdings.

The Goat Exchange lists two development stages for the play: Ars Nova in February 2025 and Green Lung in November 2025. The program thanks Ars Nova and Green Lung Studios. The first preview of the world premiere at Cherry Lane was on October 7, 2026, and opening night is dated October 18, 2026. The writer and the company also made Dad Don't Read This, which ran in summer 2026.

The theater has a long history of its own. Cherry Lane says it was founded in 1923 and calls itself New York's oldest Off-Broadway theater. The building went up in 1817 as a farm silo and opened as a theater in 1923. A24 reopened it on September 8, 2025, after a renovation of equipment, seating and lobby. After the renovation the main stage has 167 seats, and the building also holds a 60-seat studio.