Eighteen-year-old Paulina Sarpong (Denée Benton) commands the pack of four fellow students at Aburi Girls Boarding School in central Ghana with a chilling blend of charisma and cruelty. Beautiful and talented, she wields power the way a practiced bully does—not through aggression alone, but through the magnetism that makes her pack want her approval even as they fear her judgment. When the Headmistress Francis (Heather Alicia Simms) introduces new student Erika Baofo to the pack, the school’s delicate social machinery faces a test: who will sacrifice what to win the Miss Ghana 1986 crown? And in a play about complicity, colorism, and institutional bias, the real question becomes: what are these girls willing to do, and what choices will they refuse? “School Girls; Or the African Mean Girls Play” offers answers that cut deeper than the title suggests.

Whitney White directs the morally complex play with a sensitive yet exacting hand. She is able to successfully navigate the ensemble cast through the play’s scenes as the stakes for obtaining Miss Ghana 1986 get higher during every encounter between the protagonists and the antagonists, the perceived winners and losers in Paulina’s fragile pack. When Pauline demands Nana steal Erika’s folder, Whitney White directs Nana to show her concern and doubt through her words and her body language: she retreats slightly; and when she shows doubt, she raises her voice and steps forward slightly. Pauline maintains a threatening tone and posture throughout the scene. Pauline is more than a girl panicking about winning, she is a bully – part of her personality.

This same deft direction is evident throughout the play, particularly in the scene when Pauline discloses the information from Erika’s stolen file and the epilogue when the girls gather around the television set to see if Erika wins the Miss Universe Contest. After Eloise (Jasmine Amy Rogers) reveals she prefers Erika over Pauline to enter the Miss Ghana Pageant, Pauline explodes and discloses information from Erika’s file (stolen by Nana at Pauline’s threatening demand): “She can’t be the best Miss Ghana because she is not even a real Ghanaian!” White stages this scene with rapid fire dialogue. The girls’ voices quickly rise in volume, they lean back from Pauline, and exchange glances as they finally see Pauline’s vindictiveness and meanness. Nana reenters the pack after her detention and Pauline eventually joins the group to watch the pageant. Here the girls and the Headmistress gather closely around the screen and even though Erika does not win the title, their soft voices and physical closeness suggest a possible resolution to the group dysfunction that operated earlier.

The play’s organic rhythm, which is achieved both by direction and the authenticity of the cast’s performances, is enhanced by the work of the creative team. Theresa L. Williams’s boarding school lunchroom and adjacent set of doors to a hallway provide adequate stage space for fluid entrances and exits as well as the playing area for the play’s multiple scenes. With the glass wall and the glass panels in the doors, she makes the play’s dynamics visible and creates the illusion of escape routes that never quite work. Qween Jean’s boarding school costumes and pageant gowns are period perfect and help the cast with characterizations as does Nikiya Mathis’s hair and wig design. Comparisons are made between Erika’s and Pauline’s hair and gowns. Stacey Derosier’s effective lighting design and Cody Spencer’s sound design further add to create the tone of the production and deftly delineate between the mood of each scene. This is especially evident in the play’s soulful epilogue, where lighting and sound from the television set isolate and illuminate the girls’ huddle as they react to the announcements.

The audience also reacts positively to this final scene and to prior scenes in the play including when Nana confronts Pauline about her constant bullying and when Erika and the other girls finally confront Pauline about her dishonesty after she reveals sensitive information from Erika’s file. This was one of the most interactive audiences I have experienced: the actors fed the audience and the audience in return fed the actors with verbal cheers of approval, gasps of shock, and respectful expressions of solidarity that were not intrusive to the performance.

What remains after the applause is not a neat resolution, but a set of urgent questions the play refuses to answer. Who defines beauty, and at what cost? How do systems of power turn insecurity into harm? Can competition offer liberation without reproducing injustice? Can people break cycles of internalized prejudice? Though not resolved, these essential questions demand answers: what we are willing to do, and what choices we will refuse when confronted with injustice and inequality in all forms.