CULTURE CURRENT-Jocelyn Bioh on why Broadway is finally ready for ‘School Girls’

Nearly a decade after Jocelyn Bioh wrote “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play,” the play itself has barely changed. But the world around it has. The comedy about a group of teenage girls at a Ghanaian boarding school premiered off-Broadway ​in 2017, launching Bioh’s career as a playwright and going on to become a hit at regional theaters across the United States. But despite its success, Bioh was told it might not belong ​on Broadway.

Now “School Girls” has made it there — following the Broadway success of Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” in 2023 — and she is finding an ‌audience that responds ​differently to the play’s exploration of body image, the privileging of lighter skin, known as colorism, and the often brutal social dynamics of girlhood. Beneath its rapid-fire jokes and teenage rivalries is a more painful story about who gets to be considered beautiful — and what people are willing to do to fit that ideal. Speaking in New York City, Bioh discusses what has changed since “School Girls” was first produced, the universality of teenage insecurity and why bringing the play to Broadway feels like coming full circle.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. How does it feel to finally bring “School Girls” to Broadway?

It feels incredibly humbling. This play changed my life. It was the first ‌play of mine that ever got produced. I can very clearly mark what my life was like before opening night of that show and then after. That audiences and critics all still feel the same way nearly a decade later is a reminder that I was on the right track.

It also feels doubly exciting because even though it had so much success regionally and has been all over the country, I was told, “It's a great play, but maybe it's not the right fit for a Broadway stage.” What do you think was meant by that, and what has changed enough for it to be on Broadway now?

Broadway shows were very specific then. They didn't have ensembles that looked like the cast of “School Girls.” It was a lot of celebrities, a lot of things that seemed to fit into one specific category or box. The world has shifted. Audiences are different than they were 10 years ago. In a lot ‌of ways, “Jaja's African Hair Braiding” having so much success was a marker that, a Broadway play is just a play that's on Broadway. It doesn't necessarily have to fit a specific category.

Is there anything in the play that hits differently than it did when you first wrote it? The conversation around beauty standards and body image has shifted in the last 10 years. Some would say (for the) better, some would say worse, but ‌we're all aware of it in a different way.

The play kicks off with Paulina bullying Nana about her size and her eating. You can feel the audience is immediately on Nana's side. Halfway through the play, she has a moment where she really stands up to Paulina, and every night that moment gets applause. You can feel the audience cheering, almost jumping up ready to fight with her. They're taking off their earrings! We did not have that experience off-Broadway. I think we were in a time where we accepted the idea that if you were somebody who was bigger, you should be losing weight; you should be trying to conform. Our ideas of beauty are very different now. Big ships turn slow, but I appreciate that I can feel that in the audience.

Did you rewrite much for this production? Very small things, little jokes that I thought would land better. But the play is still largely the same thing I wrote in 2016.

If I were sitting down to write this play now, I don't know that I would be as honest or as vulnerable as I was then, particularly in ⁠the moments where Paulina ​is speaking very directly about how colorism has affected her life. I think I would censor myself a little bit now. ⁠I never thought the play would get produced, so I was very free and vulnerable in a way. Why?

When you're a playwright and your name starts to grow within the community, you start to have an awareness of the responsibility of your words. And I'm okay with having that responsibility because I know I'm doing something really different. I'm really blowing open how people see Black and African people on a theatrical stage. There's an incredible responsibility to that. The play takes place in Ghana, but these girls feel instantly recognizable. Did you know ⁠when you were writing it how universal they would be?

I understood that there's a real rich universality we have, particularly in school and friendship dynamics. Those things are evergreen and universal. I knew what I was writing was different, (that) the girls and the people I was reflecting were different, but I didn't want to alienate audiences. That's part of why I added the subtitle. What's something we all know and recognize about the teenage experience? Mean girls.

Paulina seems to believe that if she can just become Miss Ghana, ​she can escape the limits of her life. Is her obsession with beauty really an obsession with power and possibility? Probably. Ultimately, I think she really believes this is going to set her up for a successful life in entertainment.

The play is set in 1986, and if you became Miss Ghana, Miss World, Miss Universe — any of those things — you could become a star. This is how ⁠we have Vanessa Williams or Halle Berry or Kenya Moore, if you're of the “Real Housewives” persuasion. (Another character,) Eloise, is a former Miss Ghana and did leave. She's come back now living a different life, (signifying that) in order to have success, you've got to get out. In order to have power, you have to get out. Maybe Paulina doesn't see the beauty and power that she can build in her own country.

That's reflective of so many immigrant, particularly African immigrant, stories: In order to have success, you need to leave. I don't know if the play were ⁠set ​in 2026, (if) that would be the case now. I think the play would be very different. But for Paulina and her circumstances then, that is what she believed. The play deals so directly with colorism. Do you think colorism is in some ways more sensitive to talk about than racism?

They're inextricably linked. The play largely talks about and shows the effects of colorism, but then ends with a global lesson on racism. And we've not moved on from it. When we started rehearsals for the play in August, the biggest news story was Lupita Nyong'o playing Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan's film (“The Odyssey”). (Her casting) did not fit with whomever's standard of beauty (for) the woman whose face launched a thousand ships. Why didn't it fit? Why were there so many suggestions about, “Well, Zendaya's in the movie, why can't she play that part?” That's a very clear conversation about colorism, whether people are using that word ⁠or not.

When I wrote this play, it was really important for me to have that conversation because it had affected my life so much. Revisiting it now, especially in relation to these conversations that are happening globally, I'm like, well, we've not moved on from it. We can't move on from colorism because nobody's moved on from racism. I can't change people's minds. But if people come to see “School Girls” and ⁠their implicit bias can shift just a little bit, then I've done my job.

The play is extremely funny until you realize ⁠how much pain is sitting underneath the humor. How deliberate is that? I really believe that comedy is just a funny way of being serious. Humor and pain are on two different sides of a truth coin. It's all rooted in truth.

Paulina is a girl in the world who's trying to be affirmed and validated that she belongs there, that her beauty is widely accepted even if she knows that it's not. The lengths she goes to get there are what's comical, but it's rooted in something real that we all experience. At the end of the day, I'm a comedic writer and I want people to be entertained. But because I ‌know the responsibility of who I'm introducing and the culture I'm introducing, I ‌think there's a responsibility in also educating people. If I can make that medicine go down with a little bit of sugar, honey, agave, whatever you like, I'm willing to go there.

The perspectives expressed in Culture Current are the subject’s ​own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Reuters News. (Editing by Yasmeen Serhan and Aurora Ellis)