The Plastics are moving into downtown Aurora. Paramount Theatre's stage adaptation of Mean Girls begins previews Wednesday, marking the musical's Chicago-area premiere and kicking off the historic venue's 15th Broadway Series. The show runs through October 11, with opening night set for September 4 at 7 p.m.
A Local Take on a Tony-Nominated Hit
Based on Tina Fey's Paramount Pictures film, the musical follows Cady Heron, a smart new girl who moves from Africa to Chicago's North Shore and enters North Shore High, where she becomes entangled with the Plastics, the school's ruling clique led by Regina George, according to Shaw Local. Fey wrote the book for the stage version, with music by Jeff Richmond and lyrics by Neil Benjamin. The musical originally opened on Broadway at the August Wilson Theatre in April 2018 and went on to earn 12 Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score, according to Playbill.
This is not a touring production stopping through Aurora. Paramount Theatre self-produces its Broadway Series entirely in-house, building sets and sewing costumes on-site rather than hosting a traveling roadshow, a model launched under Artistic Director Jim Corti in 2011, per Paramount Theatre's own account. That approach places Aurora's Mean Girls staging in the same category as an original regional premiere rather than a national tour stop.
New Director, Local Star Power
Devon Hayakawa is making a solo directorial debut with this production, after previously serving on directing teams for Paramount's stagings of South Pacific, Come From Away, Cats, and Disney's Frozen, as reported by Chicago Star Media. Hayakawa is working alongside choreographer Kasey Alfonso and music director Kory Danielson on the mainstage show.
Leading the cast is Des Plaines native and Joseph Jefferson Award winner Elizabeth Stenholt as Cady Heron, who previously starred in Paramount's productions of The Wizard of Oz, Fun Home, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the Daily Herald reports. Broadway actor Dariana Mullen makes her Chicago-area stage debut as Regina George, stepping into the role of the Plastics' queen bee for this run.
Tickets, Showtimes, and Accessibility Options
Previews begin Wednesday with no matinee that day, while Wednesday performances during the regular run are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday shows run at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Sundays at 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., according to the show's Shaw Local listing. Single tickets range from $34 to $109, with additional fees applied to phone and online orders, and tickets and subscriptions are available through paramountaurora.com, by calling 630-896-6666, or at the Paramount box office, which is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and stays open until show time on show days.
Paramount has also built accessibility into the run, scheduling Pay What You Can performances on August 27 and August 29, along with an Open Captioned performance on September 30 and an ASL-interpreted performance on October 9, per Paramount Theatre. Those options are part of the venue's broader civic mission across its seasonal lineup. Separately, the Paramount School of the Arts hosted a four-week Mean Girls Broadway Intensive in July and August for students in grades 6-12, connecting youth arts students with the mainstage production's cast and creative team and including admission to the show's final dress rehearsal.
Anchoring a Landmark Season in a Historic Venue
Mean Girls opens Paramount's 15th Broadway Series, a four-show lineup that also includes a world-premiere adaptation of A Christmas Carol running November 11 through January 3, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George running February 10 through March 28, 2027, and an 1980s-inspired staging of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat running April 28 through June 13, 2027, according to the Daily Herald. Subscribers can access a Buy Two, Get Two Free package covering all four shows, with four-show packages starting at $73.
The production unfolds inside a building with its own outsized history. Built in 1931 by Chicago architectural firm Rapp & Rapp in an Art Deco and French Renaissance style, the 1,885-seat Paramount Theatre was one of Illinois's first air-conditioned movie palaces outside Chicago and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, according to the City of Aurora. The theater, located at 23 E. Galena Blvd. in downtown Aurora, was originally commissioned by Paramount Pictures as a flagship model house for early talking films.
Paramount's Broadway Series has grown into the largest subscription theater program in the United States, with more than 40,000 subscribers today after starting at 30,000 in its fifth season, per the City of Aurora. The Aurora Civic Center Authority, which operates Paramount Theatre alongside Copley Theatre, Stolp Island Theatre, RiverEdge Park, and the Paramount School of the Arts, generated an estimated $54 million economic impact for the city in 2024, underscoring how deeply the venue is woven into downtown Aurora's economy.
