High school taking on ‘Mean Girls’ in sold-out production

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on December 15, 2023.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Winston Churchill High School is staging a sold-out production of a musical adaptation of "Mean Girls" this week at the Sterndale Bennett Theatre.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

Winston Churchill High School is bringing a musical adaptation of “Mean Girls” to southern Alberta with a crew of more than 100 students in various roles.

Director Emily Morrison says she is very excited to showcase the southern Alberta premiere of “Mean Girls the musical” because no other school has performed it here before.

People who don’t have tickets already, however, won’t get a chance to see the production because it’s already sold out.

The show runs at the Sterndale Bennett Theatre to Saturday.

“We sold out within three days, there are no more tickets,” said Morrison.

“I’m really excited, it’s a bit more of a mature piece for high school students and we’ve had to have a lot of conversations about language and what language means, and what different innuendos may or may not mean to the students, and to the audience. I’m just really excited that these young humans have been given the opportunity to try something a little bit more mature, try something a little bit out of their comfort zone and to be able to share that with our community,” said Morrison.

She said she was happy with the support from the administration team in pursuing a show that is out of the normal for high school performances.

“We have stuck true to the script and we’re just rolling with the punches, and I think it’s awesome for kids to do mature things. I think it’s awesome for them to play genuine characters that they relate to, like the things happening on stage happen in our school every day, so we don’t need to shy around it or skirt around it. It’s all very real,” said Morrison.

Johanna Zieber, in the role of Regina George, and Jenna Knott, in the role of Cady Heron, spoke to reporters after running through a scene and spoke about their characters.

Zieber said her character is very similar to the one in the movie, with the obvious difference being the singing portrayal of Regina George.

“Regina George is the queen bee of this high school and she’s the boss of everyone, and she’s known for being really mean and really stuck up,” said Zieber.

When it comes to any similarities between the show and Winston Churchill High School, Zieber said it is quite different.

“It’s very dramatized and exaggerated, but I think there are some similarities because high school can be brutal. There can be mean girls, there can be cliques, but I think it’s everything a normal high school is but on steroids,” said Zieber.

The other main character of the show, as in the movie, is Cady Heron, the girl who moves from Kenya when she’s 16 years old and is trying to navigate the highs and lows of high school, the ‘mean girls’ and the cliques while trying to figure out where she belongs.

Knott, who plays Cady, says there is a message she hopes everyone takes away from the play.

“Making other people feel bad or putting them down doesn’t elevate yourself, it honestly just makes you look worse and makes you look like a meaner person. I know it sounds cheesy, but love everybody and if you’re different you don’t need to point that out and be mean about it, you can embrace each other’s differences,” said Knott.

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