School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play

In Jocelyn Bioh’s ferocious comedy, set in 1986, the queen bee at an exclusive Ghanaian boarding school competes with a sunny American student for the attention of a pageant recruiter. The play’s Off Broadway premiere in 2017 was one of the buzziest shows of the season, and returned for an encore run the next year. Now Manhattan Theatre Club brings it Broadway in a new production helmed by Whitney White (Liberation), who also directed Bioh's Jaja’s African Hair Braiding for MTC in 2023. The cast includes Jasmine Amy Rogers and Denée Bento as the principal adversaries and Heather Alicia Simms and Patina Miller as the grown-ups.