"School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play" at the Jungle Theater

On the heels of the remount of the 2018 hit The Wolves, Jungle Theater brings us another smart, funny, touching, nuanced portrayal of teenage girls in the new play School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play by Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh. But this time instead of American soccer players, the girls are students at a prestigious boarding school in Ghana. Although their lives growing up in West Africa are likely very different from most of you reading this blog, their emotions, struggles, triumphs, and dreams are the same. In a very fast 70 minutes, we get a glimpse into these girls' lives as they deal with family pressure, poverty, bullying, competition, colorism, and problematic standards of beauty. Like in The Wolves, they're all fully formed complex humans that I'd like to spend more time with.

"Familiar" at the Guthrie Theater

By all appearances, Danai Gurira is on top of the world right now. She stars in the current biggest movie in the world, Black Panther; is a cast member of one of the most popular shows on TV, The Walking Dead; recently had her Broadway premiere as a playwright with Eclipsed, the first Broadway play with an all-female and African American cast and creative team; and now her play Familiar is premiering in Minnesota, where it is set and where she spent some of her formative years (she was born in Iowa, raised in her parents' native Zimbabwe, and returned to the Midwest to attend Macalester College). Phew! How can one person be so accomplished and talented? I don't know Danai, but I'm guessing the answer is many years of hard work and dedication. All of this is reason enough to see Familiar at the Guthrie, with all of the attending buzz, but the reason to love it is that it's a really wonderful play with a brilliant cast. As the title implies, it's about families, one specific Zimbabwean-Minnesotan family in particular, that will feel familiar to anyone with a family.