Redwood Theater presents a modern twist on Mean Girls in their annual spring musical, featuring Elle Pinheiro’s debut lead role as the Karen Smith.
By: Donya Hassanshahi
Since October 2023, students involved with the production of the annual spring musical have been investing numerous hours into ensuring authentic entertainment quality.
This week, the Redwood Theater will be putting on the musical version of Mean Girls. Giving a more modern twist to productions played by Rangers, the PG-12 comedy portrays the experiences of high school schoolers navigating coming-of-age.
Elle Pinheiro, ’26, will be playing one of the Plastics: Karen Smith.
photo n.miller/Gigantea
From the age of nine, Pinheiro has been involved with musicals. With this being her first lead role, she says she was “super excited [and] super shocked. I was really thrilled. It was just a lot of hard work that I think paid off…I get my own song and everything; it’s exciting.”
During the auditioning process, she says that the authenticity of her portrayal was a key component in getting the role. “She’s super dumb. Everyone played her kind of funny and I totally played her brain dead—braindead-dumb—and I feel like it just stood out. Standing out, trying to do something different, that’s what I tried to do and it just worked out,” says Pinheiro.
To describe Karen, Pinheiro says the perfect word to summarize her is “ditzy. If you saw the character, if you saw the Broadway version, there’s no thoughts behind her mind and I love it because I feel like there’s so much creative liberty with it. Like you can do whatever, whenever, you want because that’s just how she acts.”
Embedding elements of herself into the character has been difficult for Pinheiro. As for the physical embodiment, she says “I always have a relaxed smile on my face, and I naturally smile a lot, so I feel like that’s something I definitely tried to incorporate a lot because I thought it was more fun when she was like that.”
Watching the cast and crew dedicate immense time and energy, Pinheiro’s admiration for them does not go unnoticed, saying, “Everyone’s been working so hard on this. “Everyone’s been putting blood, sweat, tears, hard work, lots of hours, its a lot of hours that go into these musicals, so I think everyone, just if they can, come and see it and see all the hard work we’ve been putting into it because there’s really so many different roles that you don’t even get to see on stage that make this thing happen.”
For those who have not watched the Mean Girls movie, Pinheiro says, “It’s honestly even better going into it not seeing the movie because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
To see Pinheiro play Karen Smith, come see the musical opening night on February 15 at the LJ Williams Theater at 7:00pm. The musical will also take place on the 16 and 17 of February following opening night.
Donya Hassanshahi
Donya Hassanshahi, '24 is a third year journalism student writing for the Redwood Gigantea. She seeks interest in the Humans of Redwood, hoping to inspire the Redwood community with her writing. You can reach her by her email at donya.hassanshahi@gmail.com.
Tags: arts & entertainment, Donya Hassanshahi, drama, features, humans of redwood, mean girls the musical, musical, rangers, Redwood, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, Redwood Musical, redwood rangers, rhs, visalia ca
