Last week I was lucky enough to be invited by Girls Write Now to attend a workshop and viewing of School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play on Broadway. Written by Tony Award nominated actress-turned-playwright Jocelyn Bioh, directed by Tony Award nominated director Whitney White, and currently being produced by Manhattan Theatre Club, the play follows a group of high school girls in 1986 Ghana who are all competing for the title of Miss Ghana in the national beauty pageant. Paulina, the queen bee and conventionally perfect candidate for the pageant title, is convinced she’ll be selected by the recruiter, until a mixed-race American student transfers at the last minute and completely overthrows the school’s dynamic. The play is a wild rollercoaster between ridiculously relatable laugh-out-loud moments and the devastating reality of the pursuits of beauty standards by young women and the effects of colorism in West Africa.
The experience itself happened in two parts: we began with a workshop alongside the team at Manhattan Theatre Club before walking a few blocks to the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. As I arrived at Manhattan Theatre Club’s headquarters in Midtown with a fellow Vassar student, I didn’t entirely know what to expect. We had very little information other than the headline on my Girls Write Now Slack channel: “Free Broadway Tickets,” which made the experience an immediate must-do for a theatre kid like me. As the workshop began, we (nine GWN mentees, one guest from Vassar, four GWN staff members, and our two leads from Manhattan Theatre Club) got straight into some fun theater warm ups and a brainstorm around the topic of the show: beauty standards. Camille Simone Thomas, our workshop leader and teaching artist at Manhattan Theatre Club, encouraged us to think about and openly discuss what has historically been considered beautiful and the consequences of pursuing those expectations. For the next hour and a half, our group of women ranging from ages thirteen to sixty were able to speak in conversation with each other about the realities of bigotry, social media, societal pressures towards weight and beauty, and even our own personal experiences and struggles with the expectations around our bodies without judgement; an experience that has felt more and more unachievable in the last few years.
This workshop, which allowed us to become more comfortable talking about the uncomfortable, helped prepare us for the difficult topics addressed in Bioh’s play. In only 80 minutes it managed to address topics such as colorism, diet culture and fixation on losing weight, media manipulation, and the societal pressures put on teenage girls. Our prime mean girl Paulina’s (Denée Benton) crew consists of a vividly realistic cast of characters: Ama (Lucia Aremu), her best friend who is secretly sick of Paulina’s toxic behavior, Nana (Erin Morton), who likely struggles with binge-eating because of her difficult home life, and Mercy (Jordan Rice) and Gifty (Nia Otchere-Sarfo), two energetic younger girls who are two sides of the same coin. From the start, it is clear Paulina’s fixation on beauty stems from long before her knowledge about the pageant as the opening scene of the play consists of her patronizing Nana about her decision to eat porridge instead of an apple. During this interaction, Paulina asks Nana if she wants to keep eating and be fat or change her ways and be “fit and popular.” Nana chooses popular and the rest of the play proceeds similarly until transfer student Ericka Boafo (Jasmine Amy Rogers) arrives two weeks into the semester from America. Ericka brings to light the ridiculous and dangerous stereotypes that Paulina has encouraged and the two girls battle it out for the Miss Ghana 1986 title as the play culminates in a high-tension altercation to decide the nominee wherein everyone’s secrets are revealed. I’m not exaggerating when I say my jaw dropped at the reveals of all of the girls’ hidden pasts and the stomach-turning result of the pageant recruiter’s decision.
School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play is a masterful navigation through the reality of being a teenage girl and what is really considered “Black-enough” or “White-enough” while still managing to make you leave the theater singing Whitney Houston and talking about Chinatown’s “Calvin Clean.” All around, it was a truly lovely experience with both the team at Manhattan Theatre Club and School Girls on Broadway and a perfect way to spend a Friday night. If you want to catch this wonderful production, though previews started on September 8, the play officially opens at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on September 28 and plays its final show on November 1. Tickets are available through both Telecharge and TodayTix with rush tickets priced at only $49, and after my experience this week, this production is absolutely worth every penny.