Mean Girls at a Miss Ghana Pageant; How the Bowery Became 'the Devil's Mile'

All Of It with Alison Stewart

The episode features two distinct cultural explorations: a deep dive into the Broadway revival of 'Schoolgirls: Or, the African Mean Girls P

Key takeaways

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh uses her personal history to explore the insidious nature of colorism in 1986 Ghana.
Actor DenÃ©e Benton describes playing Paulina as exploring her 'shadow self' and reflecting societal brutality.
Director Whitney White emphasizes the importance of cultural authenticity, such as using large Ghanaian flags in the theater.
Curator Lisa Phillips details how the Bowery transitioned from a Dutch 'bower' (farm) to a notorious 'Skid Row'.
The removal of the Third Avenue L train in 1955 is cited as a pivotal moment that changed the character of the Bowery.

Main topics

Schoolgirls Broadway revival
Colorism and identity
History of the Bowery

Notable quotes

Comedy is just a funny way of being serious.

Conclusion

A compelling look at how art and history intersect to define the cultu

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:08) This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. A reminder, we have another Broadway on the radio event coming up in exactly two weeks. On Thursday, October 8th at noon, we'll be joined in the green space by the cast of Operation Mincemeat, the hit Broadway musical about British espionage in World War II. The cast recently had a full replacement from an all-British to an all-American actors, and we'll have the full cast here in the studio to perform live. That's Thursday, October 8th at noon, live from WNYC's green space. Tickets are going fast, but you can still get yours by going to WNYC.org slash events. Now let's get today's show started with something else that's happening on Broadway right now. Speaker 3 (1:06) In Schoolgirls or the African Mean Girls play, it opens in 1986 with Paulina, a beautiful teenager with a dream. She wants to be Miss Ghana. She thinks she has it in the bag. After all, she basically runs the girls' school where she lives with other students who bow to her. That is until a new Ghanaian-American student arrives from Ohio. Erica is also very pretty and talented and light-skinned. Paulina cooks up a scheme to take the new girl down, but how far will she go to get what she wants? And in the end, did she ever really stand a chance, given the societal norms that are insidious? The show is both heartbreaking. and hilarious. Schoolgirls or the African Mean Girls play was written by Jocelyn Beow and played off Broadway. It's now playing on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. The production is directed by Whitney White. Joining us now is Jocelyn Beow. Nice to meet you, Jocelyn. Hi. We've met before. Yes. And director Whitney White. Hi, Whitney. Hi. And actor playing Paulina. The actor playing Paulina is Danae Benn. It's nice to see you, Danae. Speaker 4 (2:07) Nice to see you again. So Speaker 3 (2:09) what was going on in your life when you wrote this play? Jocelyn? Speaker 1 (2:13) Nothing. No, no. As a playwright, not much, you know, which I think is why I felt brave enough, vulnerable enough, and fearless enough to write a play that felt very, you know. deeply connected to me. I had a very long journey to owning my beauty as a dark skinned woman. And I feel like this play was kind of like the period at the end of that journey. And so I went to boarding school. My mother went to the boarding school that the play is set in. So I always knew I was going to write about those dynamics. But when I came across the story, I came across the story in 2014, but it happened in 2011 where they had the Ghana pageant officials brought over an American biracial girl. Her father was Ghanaian, her mother was white. She grew up in Minnesota and she won Miss Ghana and went on to represent Ghana in the Miss Universe pageant. And it was kind of a scandal in Ghana, but I just was so fascinated by how colorism had infiltrated so deeply into a Miss Universe pageant. So, yeah. Speaker 3 (3:23) That's amazing. Your mom went to the school? Speaker 1 (3:25) She did. Speaker 3 (3:26) She did. What did you want to know about the school from your mom? What did you take away from your mom? Speaker 1 (3:30) Well, I was really curious about what her experience was because she came from really a humble upbringing. And I knew it was a big deal that she had gone to that school. She only went there for like the last three years of her high school. So essentially... what we would think of like 10th through 12th grade. But it was a big life changer for her. And it's the one thing that she always kind of carried with her, that she was an every girl school alum. And anyone I've met who was an alum of that school was actually very proud of their school. So I wanted to kind of unpack what that meant to someone like her. Whitney, this is your second time Speaker 3 (4:12) working with Jocelyn. You worked on Yaya's African Hair Braiding. Yes. What makes a good collaboration between the two of you? Speaker 6 (4:20) Jocelyn's brilliance. Jocelyn's bravery. Her storytelling. Her pen. Her pen is so mighty. And I experienced this play 10 years ago like so many other New Yorkers. I am a dark-skinned, presenting black woman. I felt seen by it. I saw myself in it and now revisiting it as a director, I've had to go back and really read the script. And in reading the script, I just can't tell you how brilliant it is on the page. So I think what makes a great collaboration is a brilliant collaborator. I also think Jocelyn and I are very complimentary. She's so thoughtful. There's not a period out of place and I'm very experimental. Let's try this. Let's try that. And so I think that my chaos of presence and her brilliance of thought makes a great team. So Speaker 3 (5:08) today you play characters that we've rooted for. We root for Peggy on the Gilded Age. But this character, Paulina, from The Jump, she really says really awful things to the other girls. And later on the show, she does a couple of awful things. How did you get in the mind of a person who makes those choices, the kind of choices that Paulina makes? Speaker 4 (5:28) You know, I feel like Paulina is my shadow self. I think she's the shadow of all. Of us who feel repressed in any way when we know we are good enough to have what we want, but there's some obstacle in the way that is not our fault. And so I think she is this really... Speaker 4 (5:53) clear, brutal reflection of society. And she just speaks what's already true, what's already believed, what's already practiced. Other people, you're just supposed to kind of gaslight yourself out of believing that that's what's going on. Obviously, she's a feral teenager and like moves pretty much entirely on strategic. impulse, which is like a crazy thing to move on. And I actually found it pretty cathartic to not have to pretend like some of the things that make me bitter aren't the same as things that make Paulina bitter. I don't bully people with it, but I definitely can't say that I don't feel it. Speaker 3 (6:37) What's it like to revisit your teenage self? Speaker 4 (6:41) You know, I honestly... Speaker 3 (6:43) Or a Speaker 4 (6:43) version Speaker 3 (6:43) of your teenage self. I Speaker 4 (6:44) feel like maybe I would have adjusted as an adult quicker if I had unleashed some of my Paulina-like rage as a teenager. You know, I think I was slower to bloom in those parts of myself. And I find her to be really brave. Obviously, I don't condone how she treats the other girls around her and how she kind of becomes the oppressor that she learned from. But... I get her. And I think that that's why she wins people over by the end. Because Jocelyn's written someone who is undeniably human. And I think the audiences really connect to Speaker 1 (7:22) that. Speaker 3 (7:23) Jocelyn, why did you set it in the Speaker 4 (7:24) 80s? Speaker 1 (7:25) A myriad of reasons. One, I'm just, I'm a pop culture kid. I think I'm just obsessed with times that are not the current one. But... Certainly in the 80s. No, there was a lot of reasons. Certainly in the 80s, I think pop culture was like really blooming. There was a real mixture of culture. The way American culture was infiltrating into other countries, I thought was really interesting. The way music, you know, Whitney talks a lot about like, this is where we saw first mashups. This is where we saw Run DMC and Aerosmith partnering. Like we saw these kind of like cultural connections that hadn't really existed before. But mainly, I mean, the... The story centers around this young girl who's trying to win a pageant. And back in 1986, you could become a superstar if you won Miss Universe or Miss America or any of those things. That's how we know some of our queens today, Vanessa Williams or Kenya Moore, if you're a Real Housewives fan. You could become an actual star. Halle Berry, she was Miss Ohio. And so that made... at least her dreams a little more realistic when I put it, you know, in the past. And also, I think I wanted to just speak to how timeless all of these experiences are. It doesn't matter if it's set in the 80s, the 90s, you know, I mean, present day, it would be a little different because of cell phones and the advent of social media. But there is still a real timeless quality to it that even people who are 16 years old now or, you know, 65 years old now still. feel a connection to it. Speaker 3 (9:03) Whitney, we want to know that we're in this girl school immediately. What did you want to capture about girls living together in the first few moments of the play? Speaker 6 (9:12) Well, you know Speaker 3 (9:13) what? I love this question. Thank you. Speaker 6 (9:14) I think even a priori to that, I just wanted to land Ghana. So when you walk into the theater, it's not going to be a spoiler to say, you're going to walk into this Broadway theater that has this 35 plus year history and you're going to see the Ghanaian flag as large. You won't see it anywhere in your life that large. And you'll be listening to all this music. And I feel that my cultural connection and love of Ghanaian culture, I just wanted that to soak in with every choice in the show. And then I wanted you to really feel like you're... In this school. And the entire play takes place in the lunchroom. And I don't know how anyone else feels listening out there, how you feel, Asin. It's like, I remember the lunchroom of my high school. It is where you lived and died. It is where you could become king and queen or be a pauper peasant in one lunchroom sitting. It is where socioeconomics became very clear. I was very poor. And growing up, you know, the kids with the fancy lunches, the rest of us with peanut butter and jelly, you know, there's nothing wrong with peanut butter and jelly. But like everything came to light in the lunchroom. And so I just wanted you to I want the audience to live in this space with where the girls feel freest to gossip, to bully each other, to talk, to become sisters, to become enemies, because that's where it all went down for me. You just took me back. I know. It's the lunchroom. You know, Speaker 4 (10:41) you Speaker 6 (10:41) pick up Speaker 3 (10:42) that lunch tray and you got to walk the gauntlet. We're talking about a new Broadway production of Schoolgirls or the African Mean Girls play with actor Danae Benton, playwright Jocelyn Beo and director Whitney White. So when you first enter, we realize Pauline is the queen bee. What characteristics or mannerisms or the way you speak that lets us know that she's the boss. Speaker 4 (11:08) You know, Paulina to me really, I think a lot about Greek theater. She's so large in size that it's kind of the role of a lifetime to be able to take up that much space. There's nothing subtle about her, which I think it's very getting inside of what I think is quotidian around the dignity of West African women is there's not a lot of bullcrap. in the ways that they're going to communicate with you. You're going to know exactly what's being said to your face. Yeah. And it'll be said so smoothly that you'll wonder if you're bleeding. And I think really letting myself strip away any of the like American niceties that we have in our culture and really dropping in to someone who's in a life or death situation. She also comes from very meager means, but none of the girls know it because she moves like she's the dictator of a large kingdom. And I think that she has, we have this nail file prop that I sort of use as a nail file. a magic wand and a weapon. And all of those things between the music, between this coat that I have over my jacket. That's what caught Speaker 3 (12:22) me. Over my shoulders. Over your shoulders. Queen