“★★★★★ ... an original experience that puts Bethel’s teen years brilliantly on display. Few of us would be so brave.”
“This is an epoch of teenagehood in the nineties from a completely unique perspective. Go see this deeply original play.”
“Funny and sharply observed, it’s an intelligent and honest look at adolescence”
“...a wonderfully perceptive glimpse into teenhood...”
PRODUCTION HISTORY
Vancouver Fringe Festival 2019
Best of Toronto Fringe - TO Centre for the Arts
Toronto Fringe Festival 2019
Nanaimo Fringe Festival 2018
Winnipeg Fringe Festival 2018
Uno Festival 2017
Victoria Fringe Festival 2017
Intrepid Theatre's YOU Show (Workshop), 2015
After the Beep
creator / performer Pamela Bethel
director Geoffrey Ewert
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?