Rochester Civic Theatre X Cosmic Whiskers | Mean Girls Collaboration 2026

The Skyway Display was inspired by the want to add even deeper complexity to Regina's character after watching Reneé Rapp's 2024 performance. What I found particularly delicious about her performance was her movement from Regina as the ultimate woman to a woman who has decentered men. It led me down the Mean Girl fandom, and of course, to Reneé's interpretation of Regina being a "lesbian who uses men as pawns." 

In Alejandro and I's discussion of how to put this display together, we talked at length about how Regina's character might be a narcissistic mask and her "meanness" comes from a denial of her true self. So, we (as well as the rest of the fandom) asked the question: What if Regina is secretly in love with Janis, but cannot admit her real feelings to herself? 

This display is a window peak into that fandom and we used the idea of giving people a behind-the-scenes look into Regina's bedroom to see the more complicated character beneath the Mean Girl mask.  

Why is Regina George a mean girl? For a girl who seemingly has it all - looks, popularity, Chanel- she does not resonate as someone who feels happy with her life. Meanness is born out of self-denial and resentment. What if Regina's position is the very cage that keeps her from living authentically? What if the person Regina wants to be with the most is the person she can never allow herself to have -- Janis. 

Eric: Shelby, your work is rooted in grief, memory, and the animals you've loved and lost.. How does a project like a Mean Girls lobby mural — glossy, fannish, fun — fit into that body of work, or does it feel like a deliberate departure? 

Shelby: I took on Mean Girls specifically because I see it as another avenue to exploring grief. My background is academic scholarship of English literature and fanfiction. I grew up on Quizilla.com, FanFiction.net, and AO3. In both fanfiction and critical theory, the idea is not to establish or unearth the hard facts of a story, but to complicate and change a story that makes us experience it in a whole new way. For me, both academically and as a fangirl, complicating a character adds compounding richness to this experience.  In Mean Girls, I found a common denomenator thread of grief in fans who feel they have given up parts of themselves in order to "be a good girl" or "be a good woman." This is not something that only women can relate to either, but everyone. This notion of giving up one's self complicated my relationship with grief. When you lose someone you love, you lose a part of yourself that you were with them, but when you are the one causing the loss of self to "fit in" is something entirely different. That loss of self brings a lot of shame and dissonance with it. Self-abandonment is a hard truth to accept, and I think, in 2026, Mean Girls can help many people can connect in solidarity to a time period when we all feel the most pressure to conform: high school. Coming face-to-face with the reality of how self-abandoment has affected us is something I think anyone and everyone can glean real healing from right now.

Eric: Is there a version of "the strange familiar and the familiar strange" happening in the Regina George bedroom concept, or is that piece more purely a celebration?  

Shelby: When RCT told us to take the reigns of Mean Girls, I started with the fandom. What did the fans feel the story was saying? There was an intersection between complicating Regina's character (particularly the question "Is Regina George a lesbian?") from fans made me rethink who Regina was. What I saw was a woman performing the peak essence of "woman-ness" in the male gaze, but who is Regina George behind the mean girl? What if Regina is in love with Janis, but is not able to even let herself realize it? The Skyway display simply takes the question of "What if Regina George was really in love with Janis?" and gives you a glimpse into someone's life that may be different than what they present to us. In the display is literature on the nature of gender and feminism (from fabulous artists and students in Merida, Mexico), a witheld candy cane for Janis, and a to-do list to take down Janis and regain control of the reality she has so specifically crafted to protect her from her self. This is not stating that this is who Regina George definitively is, but makes a familiar character suddenly a stranger and suddenly they become a person we not only empathize with, but now understand on a visceral level.

Eric: Did working on something built around fandom and spectacle change how you think about what your art is "for" — versus the more private, processing-oriented work you've each described?

Shelby: Stories are how we process the world around us and what I love about what Tina Fey did with Mean Girls in 2024 is to take an existing story, but lay it over a different time period. This isn't new. Romantics retold the stories Shakespeare in the 1800s. We retell Romantic stories in modern time. The power of story is that we take a mythos of one story and adapt it to the needs of the present. The 2024 adaptation popped open each Mean Girl character for us to examine deeper, relate to, and even try on ourselves. Were Regina George, Cady Heron, or Gretchen Weiners truly embodied selves, who would they be? This invites us to ask ourselves, "Who are we outside of our concerns?" I focus a lot on the idea of the "apex predator," an animal that does not fear predators because it sits at the top of the food chain. If we could see ourselves as the apex predators of our own lives, so to speak, who would we be? I offer that question up to the patrons of RCT as they come to see Mean Girls, because, for me, it takes us back to real depth of stories, which are metaphorical bubbles in the quantum, that allow us to slip on entirely new selves on for size so that when we return to material reality, we may choose a new self that is even more aligned with who we really are. 

Eric: Walk us through the mock-up you've done so far for the lobby — what's the concept behind the "3-part experience," and why include interactive elements like the sofa photo-op and the crown and sash? 

Shelby: As a former educator, I know the benefit of experiencing an idea both in different formats (written, visual, textual, etc) and multiple times (the more the better). I carried this differentiation I used in the classroom and, this time, brought it into an art installation. My goal is for patrons to experience Mean Girls in a way that it induces a deep connection with the show. In order to do that, I ask the question "Who are you outside of your concerns?" in multiple ways. In the Burn Book, I'm going to ask people, anonymously, to just share who is it they have always wanted to be. Then I offer them a reading of the article I wrote about who is the real Regina George. Then, finally, in going up onto the stage (and I encourage every single person to do this) and taking a picture of themselves as the apex predator. My hope is that when patrons have experienced these things, and then watch Mean Girls, they will look back at what they wrote, the picture they took, and this new perspective of Regina and they might find a deeper connection to an inner self and feel of self-empowerment that they have long been disconnected from. In a world that is slowly taking the human out of books, film, social media, etc, I wanted to go the opposite way and rather than pushing the human out, I wanted to reach out to the patrons and ask them to add their humanity to the experience of the theatre.

Eric: With Frankenstein and Les Miserables also on deck, are you already thinking about how the lobby mural evolves show to show, or is this a fresh concept each time?

Shelby: In my research and novel-writing, I have long abandoned the futile effort of picking a thesis (or ending) and then trying to force the research and characters to conform. Rather, I tend to let the creative process take full control and reveal itself to me. So, to answer your question, they will all be different! How so is yet to be seen. Lindsey, the director, said from the start she wanted to focus on the human nervous system and how the lack of proper parenting (Victor, we're looking at you, babes) affects a person.   For Frankenstein, we are very inspired by the film Oppenheimer and the book "The American Prometheus," but this has also paired with my own reinspiration of the Gothic story with Wuthering Heights and in Project Hail Mary. What is currently forming is the question where does monstrousity come from? Victor Frankenstein's monstrosity and perversion of nature seems to stem from his relationship with his father, his isolated upbringing, and his innability to cope with the loss of his mother. Do humannity's monstrous pervesions of nature through various technologies stem from our desperation to fill the viscious void caused by a lack of parental acceptance (felt most strongly in our nervous systems)? What if humanity created technology not from lack, but to the benefit of all and the harm of none? That question and it's manifestation as the art installation will continue to reveal itself. As for Les Mis, I have a thousand ideas and I'm excited to surprise myself at what pearl ends up revealing itself in May.

What's on the books next? Frankenstein

We are already working hard to put together our mural installation for Rochester Civic Theatre's Frankenstein. Sign up for our newsletter for updates on the project and see it come together from start to finish.