She’s So Mean high school production in Standard

Times Contributor       

 

Standard School’s high school performance class performed an original play, She’s So Mean on June 11. The play was inspired by the movie Mean Girls (Rosalind Wiseman, Tina Fey 2004). 

Teacher Ed Yu says, “it can be difficult to find a play that utilizes each student’s strengths so we decided to create our own.”

The students began brainstorming ideas for the play early in March. As they improvised certain scenarios from their own experiences, the scenes of the play emerged. Creating the play from improvisation and real experiences allowed the students to feel that this story was about them.

The production circled around the life of teenagers, bullying and acceptance amongst their peers through musical pieces and drama. 

Students chose songs that they were interested in performing and as the play developed, some songs were added while others were removed because they no longer fit within the play. Yu says, “I think what makes something like this successful is that once we created something, each student felt some ownership of it and were proud of it.  For some of the students, it was their first time performing a musical number”.

While not being a musical so to speak, the music and songs chosen made their way into being an integral part of the production.  Some of the songs featured included: She’s So Mean by Matchbox Twenty, Happy by Pharrell Williams and Say Something by Great Big World.

The story follows the new girl, Emily Smith (played by Kelsey Kathol) arriving at school, seemingly innocent until her new friend, Jenny Allen (played by Catrin Thomas) convinces her to join the popular group, the Straws in order to get revenge. The tension grows as Emily becomes more popular and less innocent and in the end must make the choice of whether popularity is worth sacrificing friendship.

“We hope that more students try drama,” says Yu. 

As the character Mr. Graderson (played by Gabriel Love) says, “mainly because if we have this activity, we have to make sure that there are enough students participating to justify getting out of regular classes.”