The touring production of Mean Girls the Musical will be able to go ahead, starting tonight when it arrives in Thousand Oaks.
She’s considered to be one of the greatest movie villains of all time - Regina George. And she’s coming our way.
Mean Girls started as a 2004 film written by Tina Fey and was reimagined as a rock musical - scoring 12 Tony Award nominations including Best Musical, with lyrics written by Nell Benjamin.
Benjamin told KCLU, the 21-year old story is timeless and continues to gather new fans.
"That's it. Triumph and tragedy, right? That it's so brilliant what Tina [Fey] was able to do, and yet it remains relevant. And I am, I have to say, sorry to a tremendous extent that the issues remain relevant," said Benjamin.
"But it is such a privilege to be a part of the thing that keeps speaking to women again and again about it and gives them other options on how to handle it sooner," she said.
Benjamin says as well as being funny, the lessons of the movie are complex and empower girls to stand up for themselves.
"Since Tina turned Queen Bees and Wannabes into a movie, a lot more research and thought has been given to girls, how they socialize and how they are educated, socialize," said Benjamin.
"We've all discovered what probably the girls already know, which is - it's not that simple. It's not girls being mean, right? It never was. It's the situations they find themselves in, particularly in adolescence and high school and how they're allowed to respond," she said.
"That sounds a little academic, but what I mean is that relational aggression, as we understand it, was not just of girls are naturally underhanded or that girls are naturally sneaky. It was that female anger and rage is not valued in this society. Certainly physicality is not valued," she said.
"I noticed this when my daughter was growing up that boys on the playground would be smacking each other and rolling around and laughing and nobody batted an eyelash. And then if a girl pushed another girl, suddenly there's ten people there like, 'No, no, no. We don't push our friends.'"
"Girls are sort of told you are nurturing and you should have a network and you know, you should build a community. And boys are told work it out if they're even told that. So what happens is if you are not rewarded for expressing your anger honestly, you won't express it honestly. You'll find other ways. And if you're told your value is in your relationships and networks, then the way you'll hit somebody is through their relationships and networks. And so that becomes not girls being manipulative, girls being mean - it's just if no one else is respecting what they want to say, well, they'll say it another way because they're very clever."
Mean Girls the Musical starts Friday at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center in Thousand Oaks and runs through Sunday.
