Denée Benton, Jasmine Amy Rogers and Jocelyn Bioh on the Fierce Truths and ‘Feral’ Energy of Broadway’s School Girls

Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; or the African Mean Girls Play has sashayed onto Broadway, inviting audiences into the beehive of an exclusive girls' boarding school in 1986 Ghana. Directed by Whitney White, School Girls stars Denée Benton, Jasmine Amy Rogers, Heather Alicia-Simms, Tony winner Patina Miller, Erin Morton, Nia Otchere-Sarfo and Jordan Rice. Broadway.com caught up with the cast and creative team on opening night to discuss the play’s potent themes and prickly laughs.

“People are in for a thrill,” says Benton, who plays queen bee Paulina. “It's a perfectly written play. Jocelyn's one of our greats and it's airtight.” Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner Rogers plays Ericka, an American transfer student who shakes up the school’s social hierarchy. “We're talking about colorism, colonialism, classism,” she says. “For Black women across the diaspora, you see yourself on stage in a way that we don't really get to. That's why it works, because it's the truth and it's powerful and it's hilarious and it's quick and it's smart.”

School Girls premiered off-Broadway in 2017 and introduced Bioh as a playwright to watch. “My vision board was filled with all kinds of things, but dreaming of being on Broadway with the first play that ever got produced of yours, that's a dream I was even too scared to dream. So this is really surreal in all the best ways,” Bioh says. “I think 10 years on, 10 years older, you hear things and experience things differently than you did. There's lines that I'm like, 'Whew, I didn't realize I wrote it that way.' I was really honest and raw in a way that I probably would censor myself now."

Speaking to the audience response to School Girls, White says, “They're living in it and so responsive, and that's been a big surprise.” As for her approach to the material, she says, "It's true to my experience. If you take yourself back to that hormonal place, you just feel so much and we really can be so cruel to each other, especially when we're left unsupervised and when we don't feel there's another way to get what we need.” She adds of the staging, “I really wanted to remind people of the cultural setting in which the play takes place because it's just so delicious. Ghana in ‘86 was a beautiful time. Cultural barriers were coming down, social barriers were shifting and that came with a price.”

Hear more from the cast in the video below:

Get tickets to School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play!