‘School Girls’ critiques beauty standards in final Broadway performances

School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play ends its Broadway run this week, and the producers are offering a livestream of the final performances on The League of Live Stream Theater’s website. The show, written by Tony‑nominated playwright Jocelyn Bioh, will be available for a fee to the general public but free for high‑school students. The cast—Jordan Rice, Nia Otchere‑Sarfo, Lucia Aremu, Denee Benton, Heather Alicia Simms, Erin Morton, Jasmine Amy Rogers and Patina Miller—takes its curtain call on the same night it closes the theater.

The play is set at a Ghanaian boarding school in 1986, where a group of teenage girls competes for the coveted Miss Ghana title. The queen bee, Paulina, bullies her peers over looks and food choices, demanding they choose between being “fat‑fat” or “fit and popular.” Her plans unravel when a new transfer student, Ericka from Ohio, arrives and exposes Paulina’s toxic behavior during a rendition of Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All.” The clash brings the school’s headmistress and a pageant recruiter into a debate over colorism and who should represent Ghana on the global stage. Bioh uses humor and humanity to explore how beauty standards and girlhood pressure intersect, especially in a society still grappling with the legacy of colonial attitudes toward skin tone.

Bioh, a Ghanaian‑American, says the play’s subtitle emerged after she reflected on the universal archetype of “feral teenage girls,” a term her friend Danai Gurira used to describe the characters. Though the title nods to the 2004 Tina Fey film, Bioh insists she was not directly thinking of the movie while writing. She hopes the production shows that women are not a monolith and that beauty comes in many forms. Critics have praised the show for confronting colorism head‑on while delivering sharp comedy. The livestream will keep the conversation alive for audiences beyond New York, allowing educators and students to discuss the themes in classrooms across the country. The production’s closure marks the end of its Broadway stint but opens a new chapter as it reaches a wider, digital audience.