Whatever gets you through the night
TEEN ANGST: Female co-stars poke fun at their high school days when every party was a very big deal
For the premiere of the upcoming run of 2016 Fringe Festival hit The After After Party, don’t bring flowers. Bring Fireball.
“It will always be a part of this piece,” said Katey Hoffman of the cinnamon-flavoured whiskey. The actor/writer plays Fiona, who with fellow outcast Jules (Cheyenne Mabberley), spends a night in a park swearing, imbibing and stressing.
“It’s definitely what I drank in high school. We mixed it with Coke. At that age, you just want something sweet and powerful to get you through the night.”
The sugary cinnamon liqueur is one of the details of teen life that, along with the characters of Jules and Fiona, endeared the play to audiences and critics during its run at the 2016 Fringe Festival.
The After After Party earned a bunch of accolades, including a Pick of the Fringe nod and the Cultchivating the Fringe award.
Hoffman and Mabberley have workshopped the play for its upcoming Vancity Culture Lab run.
“We updated some parts with new jokes to keep it topical,” said Mabberley. “So it is a different show than what audiences saw at the Fringe. But it’s still the same premise.”
The play takes place in May 2006. Fiona and Jules have made it their mission to become popular before graduation.
“It’s very important to Jules,” Hoffman said. “In her little world, prom
is the biggest thing that could ever happen. If she’s a loser at prom ... ”
“. ... then she’s a loser for life,” Mabberley said.
The characters began life in a much shorter play (The After Party), written in 2012 for the Pull Festival of 10-minute plays.
Hoffman and Mabberley were in theatre school at the time. Kayvon Khoshkam, producer of Pull and artistic director of SpeakEasy Theatre, liked what he saw and signed on to help develop the play and characters.
Since their debut, Jules and Fiona “have become crazier,” Hoffman said.
“She’s almost become a clown of me,” she said of Fiona.
“She’s become a little more feral, I would say,” said Mabberley.
“Yeah, a little more animalistic,” Hoffman said. “These characters are really based on us, when we were in high school, but exaggerated.”
Case in point: Jules’ taste in clothes.
“She’s a little bit over-dressed for whatever she’s doing,” said Mabberley,
who is 28 and admits to the odd fashion faux pas in high school herself.
“If it’s a casual party, she’s in a tight pink tube-top dress that’s two sizes too small. It’s a little extreme.”
“As for Fiona, she needs to be as comfortable as possible for the evening,” Hoffman, 30, said.
“She doesn’t know what walls she’ll need to scale. So she usually wears sneakers and shorts. And she has her signature fanny pack full of all sorts of party favours.”
Following The After After Party’s
run, Mabberley and Hoffman won’t be anywhere near done with Jules and Fiona. They’ll will tour the show and they’re working on a sequel (The After Life Party).
“The stakes are so high for these characters,” Hoffman said.
“That’s what’s fun about playing them. I remember being a teenager and thinking that every party, every social interaction, was the biggest deal of my life. So it’s fun poking fun at that, but also finding the real vulnerability behind it.”