Y York has written a children's play for adults.

Honolulu resident and artist-in-residence for the Honolulu Theatre for Youth from 1999 to 2005, York has written numerous works aimed at youth and adult audiences. Her "Bleachers in the Sun," now in its world premiere at Honolulu's The ARTS at Marks Garage, plays as a cross-over piece.

A good deal of that tone comes from the venue. Located across from the restored Hawai'i Theatre, The ARTS is a flexible performance space with a growing reputation on the fringe of a revitalizing Downtown. It's been the home to Shakespeare, cutting-edge modern dramas and original works with questionable credentials, but wouldn't be an automatic choice to attract an audience for children's theater.

Filling the 60 seats afforded by the small playing area, the opening night audience represented a median age somewhere near 50 as a cast of four adult young women took on preteen roles in a play subtitled "It sucks to be 11."

The kids' dialogue is blunt, lacking sophistication or precise vocabulary, but also devoid of the self-assured slang that contaminates teenage language. As these girls form allegiances and test shaky friendships, their most common refrain centers around a single need, "Do you like her more than you like me?"

York builds a circular plot line and a two-act play around that motivation by giving each of the four characters a distinct and consistent personality that often plays years ahead of her chronological age.

Tilly (Monica Coldwell) is overweight and underloved. Zoe (Jessica Haworth) is articulate and wildly imaginative, but paranoid and claustrophobic. Judy (Stephanie Kong) is sly, grasping and coolly willing to manipulate others with her good looks. Rose (Kathy Hunter) uses her family's money to buy friendship, but at the same time, she knows she's being used.

The girls' backgrounds and family situations are suggested through reference, but it is very clear what each of them wants. Tilly and Rose both want acceptance. Judy wants stability and security. Fascinating and frustrating Zoe wants to live anywhere other than in reality.

Zoe's character provides the dramatic edge to the commonplace agendas being lived out by the other girls, who are yet too young to come of age, but not too young to flirt with dangerous behavior and to knowingly or inadvertently harm each other. She's also the catalyst that helps at least one of them reach a sharper sense of self.

The action happens under a set of school bleachers that provide a sheltered meeting place and a rigidly institutional background to action that is naively both tender and harsh.

York takes her title from a Bob Dylan lyric in which "bleachers out in the sun" provide a vantage point to observe the Old Testament patriarch Abraham's sacrifice of his son.

It seems that loss of innocence has always demanded an audience.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.