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?
Find out when Pioneer Theatre Guild presents “Mean Girls High School Version” on May 2, 3, and 4 at Pioneer High School’s Schreiber Auditorium, 601 W. Stadium Blvd, Ann Arbor.
Showtimes:
- Thursday, May 2nd at 7 p.m.
- Friday, May 3rd at 7 p.m.
- Saturday, May 4th at 3 p.m.
- Saturday, May 4th at 7 p.m.
- Sunday, May 5th at 2 p.m.
Tickets:
$15 Students/65+ Seniors/Pioneer staff
$20 adults
Reserved seating tickets are on sale at www.showtix4u.com/events/ptg
Adapted from Tina Fey’s hit 2004 film, Mean Girls was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. The PTG show features a 43-person cast of talented AAPS students. The 16-year-old protagonist, Cady Heron, is played by Pioneer junior Lily Wright. Wright describes Cady as “very curious, observant, a little nerdy, and she absolutely loves math”.
Wright is excited to be performing in a show “about high schoolers in a high school.” She feels that shows often feature “characters that have had different life experiences. However, with this show, characters are our age and we can really play off of our own experiences to make everything relatable and genuine.” Wright hopes the audience can relate to Cady as she learns how to navigate her new high school and all the humor that comes with it.
Wright started her musical theater journey with Young People’s Theater (YPT) in 2015. Since then she’s been in 22 productions with organizations including YPT, the Encore Musical Theatre Company in Dexter, and PTG. Mean Girls will be her 23rd show and she says she couldn’t be more excited.
Aaron Samuels, the popular love interest, is played by Pioneer junior Chase Crownover. He describes Aaron as “not the stereotypical high school jock. Aaron’s not a mean, dumb jock because he has and understands feelings, and is even in calculus.”
Something Crownover is excited to see is “how the different crews pull off the costumes and set. This story primarily takes place in a high school so it will be interesting to see how they portray a school on stage.” One thing he hopes audiences will take away is that “by the end, the audience believes to have impacted the story in more than just being there. I also hope they see that Aaron has feelings, too, and is not a pushover.”
Crownover started his musical theater journey in high school after his older sister did theater throughout her high school years and his parents both performed professionally. He hopes to continue his career throughout the rest of high school and into his college life.
In addition to the cast, there are 67 dedicated students in the crew, supporting the show behind the scenes. PTG has eight student crews; sets, props, lighting, sound, paint, makeup, costumes, and stage management.
Pioneer senior Adam Thorpe is the “senior mentor” of PTG’s sets crew for Mean Girls, and has been participating on and off since 2021. His first production was PTG’s Romeo and Juliet and he has loved participating ever since. Thorpe is most excited for when “the main structure of the set is all put together on the stage,” especially since the design is supposed to be “supremely big”. Thorpe has always been into the behind-the-scenes of theater and “can’t wait to see how everything finally turns out”.
Pioneer senior Shay Kruse is the “senior mentor” for the props crew for Mean Girls and has been involved in PTG since her freshman year. She is excited to continue working with all the members of the crew in the upcoming weeks.
Initially, Kruse was nervous about her work on this show as the former supervisor, Kris Park, sadly had to move on from her work with PTG. But with the help of the new props supervisor, Lulu Burbo-Charron, the two have had “a lot of fun overseeing the design and production of these props together.” With all of the hard work and dedication Kruse has witnessed, she is “quite eager for the audiences to see some of the iconic items we are currently making such as the Burn Book and the Kalteen Bars.” With this being Kruse’s last show, she said she is thrilled to have the chance to work with this amazing crew one last time and pass the torch to the future crew heads.
Oluchi Nwaokorie, a junior in the University of Michigan Department of Musical Theatre, is directing Mean Girls, her second show with PTG. Nwaokorie’s first was PTG’s “Into The Woods” in the fall of 2022.
She is extremely grateful to have been trusted to lead this production as she is a huge fan of the original Mean Girls movie. She is most excited to be doing Mean Girls with high school-age actors and says: “It is not often that actors get to work on material that is so close to their current lived experience.”
Nwaokorie said she thinks it will be incredibly exciting for the cast to perform material that the student body can relate to, and the most rewarding part of working on this production has been witnessing each student begin to take ownership over their characters.
“I have enjoyed the process of working through the acting choices and beat shifts from scene to scene,” she said. It has been incredibly special to see each student blossom into confident actors who follow their instincts, she said, adding that she hopes audiences will leave having deeply related and empathized with these characters.
“The beauty of Mean Girls is that Tina Fey has written incredibly human characters; especially for the high school students who view this show, I want them to feel validated, understood, and represented,” she said.
Nwaokorie hopes it serves as a “cautionary tale” to lead with kindness and “be true to yourself no matter what”. She also hopes that those who view the production of Mean Girls laugh, as the creative team has chosen to lean into the comedic writing and the absurdity of certain moments.
“That said, my collaborators and I are currently in college and understand the realities of navigating social climates as teenagers and growing adults,” she said. “Our proximity to high school has led us to craft this show with empathy and highlight the humanity of these characters and their situations.”
The box office opens one hour before shows for cash and check ticket sales. Flowers and concessions will be available for purchase in the lobby before each performance and during intermission. Cash/Venmo accepted.
*For more information, visit: https://a2ptguild.org/
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