Benton and Miller Lead Bioh's 'School Girls' on Broadway — SkimNews
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- Jocelyn Bioh's "School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play" opened on Broadway, directed by Whitney White, who also helmed Bioh's Tony-nominated "Jaja's African Hair Braiding" three years ago.
- The 75-minute play is set at Aburi Girls Boarding School in 1986 Ghana, where queen bee Paulina's social hierarchy collapses when American Ghanaian newcomer Ericka Boafo, played by Jasmine Amy Rogers, enrolls with her Midwestern accent and lighter skin.
- Denée Benton delivers what the review calls a "sensational" performance as Paulina, who uses bleaching creams and bullies classmate Nana over her larger body while scheming to reclaim her dominance in the Miss Ghana pageant.
- Tony Award winner Patina Miller plays Eloise Amponsah, Miss Ghana 1966 and the pageant recruiter, with the production framing her as the woman Paulina "might become and the cost of getting there."
- Tony-winning costume designer Qween Jean transforms the schoolgirls in glittering audition gowns for their Miss Ghana audition, while scenic design by Teresa L. Williams and lighting by Stacey Derosier set the boarding school's cafeteria.
- The production frames its humor — Bobby Brown on the boombox, Nikes, a White Castle obsession — alongside sustained examinations of colonialism, anti-Blackness, and colorism across the Black female experience.
- The Broadway staging follows an off-Broadway run and positions Bioh as an increasingly central voice in American theater, with the review calling the play "an ever-timely examination of what it is to be a Black woman or girl in a world that constantly labels you as unworthy."
Why it matters: The Broadway staging marks Whitney White's second Bioh collaboration after the Tony-nominated "Jaja's African Hair Braiding," cementing Bioh as a major voice in American theater. Denée Benton's "sensational" turn anchors a 75-minute production that confronts colorism, bleaching, and anti-Blackness through a Ghanaian boarding-school lens — depth the Mean Girls packaging risks burying.
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