A girls’ boarding school in the hills of central Ghana, circa 1986, is the unusual setting for School Girls, Jocelyn Bioh’s plucky comedy, now in a West Coast premiere at the Kirk Douglas. The play, which ran off-Broadway last year and was originally developed at The New Black Fest at the Lark, 2016, pokes fun at the way young African females are obsessed with notions of beauty, skin color, and self-worth. School Girls also delves into the struggle for power between two of the students at the school (which is supported by white missionaries). When the play opens, we learn that the power rests with Paulina (Maameyaa Boafo), a smug, tyrannical girl who bosses around her four classmates unmercifully, criticizing them for their choices in diet, fashion and pop music. Paulina, so proud of her own beauty and prowess, is confident that she will be picked to represent Ghana in the upcoming Global Universal Beauty Pageant. But then a new student, Ericka (Joanna A. Jones), arrives at the school and poses a threat to Paulina’s authority. The daughter of a rich Ghanaian businessman and a white American mother, she is not only smarter and more sophisticated than Paulina, but equally beautiful. And, even more importantly, light-skinned. When the school’s plump headmistress Francis (Myra Lucretia Taylor) announces that a recruiter for the Pageant is coming to the school, Paulina decides to take action against her only competitor. She blackmails the overweight Nana (Abena Mensah-Bonsu) into stealing Ericka’s file to get some dirt on her. Her sneaky, desperate ploy backfires on her, though, when the recruiter, Eloise (Zenzi Williams), arrives and ignores the dirt to pick Ericka over Paulina. Her reasons are both personal and patriotic. As a former Miss Ghana herself (in 1966), the haughty woman is convinced she lost out internationally because of her dark skin. If Ghana is to finish in the top ten—and bring glory to their beloved but poor, much-maligned, ex-colonial country—a light-skinned girl is its only hope. Bioh’s gifts as a playwright save School Girls from being trivial and mundane. She can find comedy in just about everything her all-female cast does and says. Capturing the behavioral antics of these teenagers is her long suit. She’s equally good at peeling back character and revealing the inner workings of Paulina, Nana, Ama (Latoya Edwards), Gifty (Paige Gilbert) and Mercy (Mirirai Sithole), the giddy, excitable and lovable students at the boarding school. Director Rebecca Taichman has choreographed their every move and gesture with admirable precision and flair.
