Jocelyn Bioh says Broadway is 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 theatres 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 colourism, 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.

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.

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.

Reuters