“School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play,” a comedy that was first staged Off Broadway nine years ago and has been widely produced around the country since, will have its first Broadway production in the fall.
The play, written by Jocelyn Bioh, is about a group of boarding school students in Ghana competing to represent their country in a 1986 beauty pageant. Jesse Green gave the original production a strong review in The New York Times, writing, “The nasty-teen comedy genre emerges wonderfully refreshed and even deepened by its immersion in a world it never considered.”
Manhattan Theater Club, one of the four nonprofits with Broadway houses, will stage the play at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, where performances are scheduled to begin Sept. 8. The director will be Whitney White, who also directed Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.” Both Bioh and White received Tony Award nominations for that production. (Bioh also has a Broadway credit as an actor, in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” White’s Broadway directing credits include this season’s “Liberation” and last season’s “The Last Five Years.”)
“School Girls” was first staged in 2017 at MCC Theater, an Off Broadway nonprofit, and has been staged more than 75 times around the United States and in Britain.
Manhattan Theater Club also said on Tuesday that this fall it will present an Off Broadway production of “The Unbelievers,” written by Nick Payne (“Constellations”) and directed by Knud Adams (“English”). “The Unbelievers,” about a woman grieving for a son who has disappeared, was staged last year at London’s Royal Court Theater with a different creative team; the Off Broadway production will begin performances Oct. 13 at New York City Center.
“School Girls” and “The Unbelievers” are the first two shows chosen by Nicki Hunter, the new artistic director of Manhattan Theater Club.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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