Fetch Isn’t the Problem..The Culture Is

The Plastics aren’t just characters—they’re a structure. A hierarchy built on insecurity, performance, and control. Regina leads, Gretchen manages perception, Karen floats—and the system sustains itself because everyone plays their part, whether they admit it or not.

But here’s where theater is different—or at least, where it should be.

We are not in a cafeteria.

There is no Burn Book.

And no one should be auditioning for Regina George.

And yet, the dynamic still shows up.

Not always as one obvious leader, but as a cluster. Often, it’s the loudest people in the room—the ones who dominate space, conversations, and energy. And more often than not, the rest of the cast sees it. They feel it. They adjust around it.

They just don’t say it.

Because by that point, many of them have already made a quiet calculation:

This is what this process is going to be.

So they cope. They shrink. They stay quiet. They get through it.

And that’s the part we don’t talk about enough—the normalization of it. The way people come to expect a certain level of tension, ego, and emotional volatility, and simply decide it’s part of the deal.

But it shouldn’t be.

Because what starts as “personality” can very quickly become something else.

You’re kept awake for days, replaying interactions. Second-guessing your tone. Wondering if you did something wrong.

And then, just as quickly, it shifts.

The same people who created that tension turn on a dime—suddenly warm, suddenly supportive, suddenly acting like everything is fine. Like you’re close. Like you’re a team.

That kind of whiplash does something.

It confuses.

It destabilizes.

It makes people question their own experience.

That’s not just difficult behavior.

That’s psychological impact.

And yes—psychological harm in theater is very real.

Not in a dramatic, headline-making way, but in the quiet, cumulative way that erodes confidence, safety, and trust over time.

And the most dangerous part? It’s often excused.

Excused as passion.

Excused as stress.

Excused as “that’s just how they are.”

In Mean Girls, the system continues because people adapt to it instead of challenging it.

But theater is not satire.

What plays as comedy on stage becomes consequence in process.

Because a rehearsal room is not just a place to make art—it is a working environment. One that requires the same level of accountability, awareness, and respect that we claim to value in every other space.

Community should not be a shield for this.

Just like in nonprofit governance, just like in leadership, just like in any collaborative structure—when behavior goes unchecked, it doesn’t stay isolated.

It becomes culture.

And culture, once established, is much harder to undo.

So we have to ask the question:

Are we building an ensemble—or recreating a hierarchy?

Because if it’s the latter, then we are not just undermining the work—we are undermining the people doing it.

The truth is, the best rooms aren’t the ones with the loudest voices or the strongest personalities.

They are the ones where people feel steady. Where they can take risks without being watched. Where collaboration is not conditional.

This isn’t high school.

And if we’re still operating like it is—excusing it, adapting to it, normalizing it— then we’re not just missing the point of Mean Girls.

We’re proving we’ve learned nothing from it.