GNS Presents Mean Girls: A Look at Meanness, Kindness and the Power of Choice

In her 2002 book, Queen Bees and Wanna Bees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World, Rosalin Wiseman shares her insights into the world of relationships, boundaries and emotions as teens navigate high school. Now in its third publication, this groundbreaking book was the inspiration for Tina Fey’s 2004 film, Mean Girls. Fey’s humour and authenticity turned a book for parents into a cult classic for teens. The musical hit Broadway in 2018 and earned rave reviews. In a note accompanying the musical script and score, Fey shares: 

“I’ve been looking forward to high school productions of Mean Girls from the day we opened on Broadway. As a former drama club member, I knew that a show with five female leads would be great news for most schools. As a former youth theatre director, I hoped that letting students play characters their own age, with a story they can relate to, would be fun and lead to some great conversations…Be good to each other and have fun.”

Fast forward to 2024 and the new movie musical offered a fresh Gen Z take, reminding us that this story’s themes are still relevant today. 

Mean Girls the Musical High School Version is a show with a proven track record, having enjoyed multiple productions at high schools in our region. Young audiences and performers resonate with the characters, the plot, and this particularly harsh high school experience amplified in all of its Musical Theatre splendour. At its core, it speaks to what it means to be mean and how the choice to be mean can have lasting consequences.

Our GNS cast is comprised of students from Grades 9 to 12. With 24 songs, Mean Girls is one of the biggest musicals we’ve done on the Denford Hall stage. The ensemble is working tirelessly to learn all of the songs, complex harmonies, and choreography. I am so proud of their efforts. Our lead actors, mostly Grade 12s, shine in their roles, in some cases stretching to find characters that are quite outside themselves. We are so lucky to be working with the accomplished Kathy Alexander as Music Director for this show. And we welcome the talented Siobhan Baker to GNS as our Choreographer. This wonderful team has been approaching the story and themes of the play with humour, grit and care.  

Mean Girls the Musical High School Version offers significant insights into how the characters explore power and belonging. Damian guides the new girl, Cady, through the various school cliques in “Where Do You Belong?” The song “Sexy” explores empowerment through wearing ridiculous and sexy Halloween costumes. We witness Gretchen’s powerlessness as she questions everything about herself in “What’s Wrong with Me?” And, in the final act, Fey attempts to transform Regina, the ultimate high school villain everyone loves to hate, into a humanized anti-hero. 

The characters of Janis and Damian act as our guides through the halls of North Shore High, where students inflict meanness on each other in many ways. Being mean is sometimes a way to exact revenge, gain power, or shut down conflict. Underneath the surface, we discover that the characters in Mean Girls also use meanness to get out of tricky situations or process their own unresolved issues and feelings. Ultimately, Mean Girls reminds us that meanness is a choice; when faced with that choice, we can choose kindness instead.

We invite you to be part of our movement to choose kindness and ask you to think about ways someone’s kindness affected you. On Pink Shirt Day, February 26, the Senior School Prefects will launch a Choose Kindness initiative. Students will be invited to add to the Choose Kindness wall outside the Gudewill Learning Commons. On the opening night of Mean Girls, we will move the Choose Kindness wall to the Upper Lobby of Denford Hall where it will stay for the duration of the musical. We invite everyone in our community to add their kindness stories. Volunteers will stand by with sticky notes. Please consider writing down a moment of kindness that made an impact on you, big or small, and post it on our wall.

Our production of Mean Girls the Musical High School Version runs from March 5 to 8 at 7 p.m. and March 8 at 2 p.m. Tickets are available in advance online or at the door. The show contains mature themes, strong language, and depictions of situations that may not be appropriate for all audiences; parental discretion is advised. If you have any specific questions, please contact Ms. Smook asmook@mygns.ca

Synopsis:

Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the wild and vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. How will this naïve newbie rise to the top of the popularity pecking order? By taking on The Plastics, a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady and her friends devise a “Revenge Party” to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung. Mean Girls, is the brutally hilarious musical from book writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde) and composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). This queen bee took Broadway by storm and has joined the musical in-crowd. Adapted from Fey’s hit 2004 film, Mean Girls was nominated for a staggering 12 Tony Awards. ~ mtishows.com