By Brennan Heims

Each year, a group of Collegiate students perform in a student-led musical. For the 2023-2024 school year, it was Mean Girls: High School Edition. The production is based on the award-winning 2004 film Mean Girls, co-written by writer, actress, and comedian Tina Fey. The cast and crew put on three performances, on Oct. 26, 27, and 28. 

From a viewer’s perspective, the musical was very entertaining. It’s wonderful how students could come together and create music and dance and have a set that clearly follows the plot of the movie and is both visually and auditorily appealing.

Promo poster for the show. Photo credit: Claire Lareau.

The main character in Mean Girls is Cady Heron, played by Kyla Williams (‘26), a girl who just moved to North Shore High School from Kenya and is trying to make friends. At first, she is friends with Janis Ian, (Ava Stevans (‘27)), and Damian Leigh (Connor Chang (‘24)). Janis is characterized as a rebellious goth girl, and Damian is her gay best friend. Cady is then pulled into a friend group labeled “The Plastics.” This group consists of three popular girls: their leader Regina George (Sadie Henderson-Best (‘24)), Gretchen Wieners (Hannah Bonbright (‘24)), and Karen Smith (Shepard Adamson (‘25)).

Cady decides to be friends with Janis and Damian in secret but acts as a mole and becomes friends with The Plastics. Cady also develops a crush on classmate Aaron Samuels (Carter Quigley (‘26)), Regina’s ex-boyfriend. This causes Cady to hold a grudge against Regina, and she starts to change little things to damage The Plastics’ reputation. Cady gives Regina protein bars that make her gain weight and starts turning Gretchen against Regina. The arguments and drama between these two characters come to a conclusion when Regina shows everyone the “Burn Book” she made that has something mean to say about everyone at the school, claiming Cady, Gretchen, and Karen made it.

Photo courtesy of Collegiate School. 

The Collegiate production started with auditions in the spring after theater director Steve Perigard announced the musical. Then the cast was selected, and the first set of rehearsals started three weeks before school started in August. On the musical’s production team were a total of 44 people, with 35 actors and nine crew members handling lights, sound, and other technical aspects of the show. Molly Rolfe (‘25) who was part of the chorus, described the situation as “stressful but exciting.” She said the actors rarely had time to sit down and do homework and would often be leaving Collegiate at 10:30 11:00 p.m. as rehearsals ramped up, so it is a major time commitment. This time commitment is considered a worthwhile sacrifice, since everyone involved feels proud of what they have accomplished.

Both the backstage crew and the onstage singers and actors in the play worked together to make an amazing production, and everyone involved seemed very proud of what they created.

Featured image courtesy of Collegiate School.