“Get in loser, we’re going shopping.” Three different high schools in Broward County heard Regina George’s iconic line, and all decided to “get in” and perform the Mean Girls musical – all for their spring shows.
The Mean Girls musical is an adaptation of the 2008 Mean Girls movie, and according to SBHS junior Angela Polanco, the choice to perform Mean Girls was nearly unanimous for the South Broward drama team.
“A lot of us really wanted to do Mamma Mia, but everybody really loved [the choice],” said Polanco, who played Gretchen and choreographed the show.
But what they didn’t expect was that two other nearby schools, Chaminade Madonna and Marjory Stoneman Douglas, also chose to perform Mean Girls – and beat the Bulldogs to the mark. Chaminade performed first, running the show from March 1st through 3rd. Then MSD performed from March 6th through the 9th, leaving South Broward in the dust. Nearly two months later, South Broward opened the show on May 2nd and closed on May 3rd. However, the Drama Dogs weren’t worried about the fact that two other schools had already performed the same show. It gave them the opportunity to one-up the competition.
“There’s a lot of like, ‘Let’s go see their production to compare it.’ Which I think honestly might help in some sense,” said Polanco.
Other musicals in the running for South Broward’s spring show were Legally Blonde and Mamma Mia, but these shows have several male leads that the Drama Dogs can’t cast.
“We don’t have that many guys,” said Polanco, “There’s only two male leads [in Mean Girls], and we were like, ‘Perfect! Two male leads, the rest of them are girls.’”
Another major reason for performing Mean Girls was the story’s rebirth this year with a new adaptation, the “Mean Girls Musical Movie”, which came out in January. The movie musical, being an adaptation of an adaptation, was received quite poorly.
“The movie version just lost a lot of life. They took all the life out of it to try to make it modern,” explained Polanco.
With the media spotlight on the new movie, people everywhere were watching it – or, according to one YouTube review, hate-watching it. With this relevance comes a natural buzz around Mean Girls, giving South Broward’s performance a boost in ticket sales. Polanco believes that comparing the movie musical and SBHS’s performance is only natural.
“I think people are gonna see our version, the actual musical theater version, and be like, ‘Oh! That’s very different from the movie,’” she said.
Many students in Chaminade’s ensemble, like senior Isabel Herraria, said that Chaminade’s performance was better than the movie, having a similar comparison confirmed. According to Herraria, who was the creative lighting design director on Chaminade’s drama team, their audience had low expectations going into the school’s performance because of the movie.
“There’s just a theater aspect and a movie aspect and they’re two completely different things,” she said, “But the average person doesn’t really understand that.”
According to SBHS freshman Gabriela McNary, who was a dancer on the drama team, South Broward’s performance was received well.
“Choreography was the Drama Dogs’ strong suit, but Emmy Grace’s performance of the song ‘Sexy’ was the highlight of the show,” said the freshman.
She thought the show was an incredible project put together by an amazing team.
“I can’t wait to see what we do next year,” said McNary.
