I’m a gentile and a writer with no Jewish friends to ask a question – hoping you guys can help!

Hi /r/Judaism! First, I just want to apologize if anything I say or ask comes off as ignorant or dumb but I am not kidding when I say that as a result of where I’ve lived and grown up, I only know one Jewish person beyond a casual acquaintanceship and even then I wouldn’t say we’re especially close friends.

I come to you all today because I’m currently working on children’s play script for a local theatre and had an idea that on the surface I like, but I want to be sure it wouldn’t be unintentionally offensive to anyone.

Here’s the simplified context of the situation: This is a comedy/drama with a sort of Halloween flavor. The main character is a girl who feels ostracized by her classmates, all of which fit into little cliques and such, and one of the ways this is really focused on is that she’s the only one not invited (or so she thinks) to a birthday party. Events transpire and at that party is where the big climax of the story takes place, yadda yadda.

The idea I’ve been running with in my head is that the party is a goth girl’s “bat mitzvah”, emphasis on bat as in “vampire”, so with a Halloween party quality. From what I understand, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the way bar/bat mitzvahs typically work is not unlike, say, a wedding, where you have the religious ceremony first generally followed by a reception/party – is this correct? In the play itself the religious ceremony would not be shown at all, just the reception afterwards which the main girl would show up to in-progress… in other words, I’m not going to have anyone dressed like Dracula reading the Torah or anything, haha. For all intents and purposes, the party in the scope of the play could just be a regular Halloween-themed birthday party or a school dance or something, but I went with the “bat mitzvah” idea one because it seemed like a good way to emphasize one message of the play, that we’re all unique and different from our “cliques” in some ways and that diversity and such is fun, and two because I thought it was a semi-clever pun that would get some audience laughs when the goth girl is inviting people to it (I imagine her doing a vampire pose and talking in a Bela Lugosi sort of voice whenever she says the “bat” part).

tl;dr/In conclusion: Basically my questions are, first and foremost, is the “bat mitzvah” pun in poor taste? And if it’s alright, do I have the general understanding of the process down by having what’s essentially a regular kids’ birthday party following the religious ceremony?

Thank you all so much for your help!