‘African Mean Girls Play’: an irreverent take on colorism and boarding schools

Written by theater actress Jocelyn Bioh, “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play” takes the issue of colorism to the stage.

While the Broadway community is all-abuzz about Tina Fey’s theatrical adaptation of the cult movie “Mean Girls,” currently playing at Washington, D.C.’s National Theater, another production shedding light on the dubious deeds of haughty high schoolers is well underway in The Big Apple.

This one, however, marks different territory: “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play” centers on the elite antics of black adolescents at an exclusive boarding school in Ghana who are competing for a beauty pageant.

With an all-black female cast, the irreverent comedy is directed by Tony Award-winner Rebecca Taichman and written by acclaimed theater actress Jocelyn Bioh, who was most recently seen in the revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “In The Blood.”

“School Girls” — premiering at New York City’s Lucille Lortel Theater on Thursday — drew its inspiration from the personal experiences of Bioh. She attended a boarding school in Hershey, Pennsylvania and her mom is a graduate of Ghana’s prestigious Aburi Girls’ School.

“We have this strange, shared experience of understanding what it’s like to be in boarding school and having to defend yourself against a group of girls,” Bioh shared. “It’s a very interesting and precarious and unique time in your life, being in middle school and high school. I just feel like that gets intensified when you’re away from home and left to your own devices.”

Bioh, who was raised in the Washington Heights section of New York City, continued: “The way you have to assert yourself in that world is just a really interesting thing, and it’s a really fascinating time being a teenager. She used to tell me little stories of the way she had to defend herself against girls that who were mean to her and how she kind of became a little meaner. It’s more comical than anything. I just let my imagination run wild when I decided to write this play.”

Another inspiration for “School Girls” was the real-life drama surrounding the 2011 Miss Universe Ghana pageant — where Yayra Erica Nego, a fair-skinned, bi-racial American native (with questionable “ancestral” Ghanaian roots) went on to win the title…

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