“★★★★/5 stars
Funny and sharply observed, it’s an intelligent and honest look at adolescence”
“...a wonderfully perceptive glimpse into teenhood...”
Production History
Uno Festival 2017
Victoria Fringe Festival 2017
Intrepid Theatre's YOU Show (Workshop), 2015
After the Beep
creator / performer Pamela Bethel
director Geoffrey Ewart
dramaturge Andrew Bailey
design consultant Erin Macklem
Development supported by Theatre SKAM.
About the Show: I found the cassettes from my very own answering machine I had as a teenager during the early 1990's. Despite the obvious risk of death by embarrassment, I'm sharing this archive of adolescence with live audiences. Part confessional, part show-and-tell, it's an exploration of awkward times revealed by the recorded voices of BFs, BFFs, a frenemy and wrong numbers.
Why I Created This Show: When I finally got up the nerve to listen to these tapes, I started thinking that I wanted to do something with them, I wanted to share them. When I started talking about them to anyone who would listen I heard back so many stories about answering machines and other unusual personal archives. The tapes are an unintentional archive; answering machine messages aren't really supposed to be saved. So they have a beautifully real, unfiltered quality. Personally, I'm desperate for less filtering these days.
We are shaped and forged by all of our experiences - the good, the bad and the ugly...perhaps even more so by the bad and the ugly. Times of change and evolution are uncomfortable but necessary. I think about the kinds of mementos we are making these days - what we keep and what we delete. Are you saving only the pretty pictures?