Katey Hoffman and Cheyenne Mabberley of After Party Theatre. Photo by Sarah Mabberley.

By Elizabeth Holliday
@femme.path

Interviewing Katey Hoffman and Cheyenne Mabberley is like watching them interview each other. They check in with one another, make each other laugh and talk in overlapping answers, giving a hint to their creative relationship.

“I write comedy on my own,” Hoffman tells Loose Lips, “but I prefer to write it with Cheyenne.”

“Yeah,” Mabberley echoes, I think we’re really comfortable being idiots around each other.”

“At the end of the day,” Hoffman responds, “I trust your comedy and your sense of humour.”

The two look at each other, their earnest, devoted smiles cracking. This is the core of a dynamic comedy duo, one that has been making waves in the Vancouver scene since 2013. Best friends, creative collaborators and heads of After Party Theatre, Katey Hoffman and Cheyenne Mabberley are out to bring woman-forward comedy to Vancouver, and they’re doing one heck of a job.

Their first collaboration in the 2013 Pull Festival—a 10-minute play titled The After Party—revealed to both Hoffman and Mabberley they were creating something powerful.

“I remember going to see it on opening and being like, ‘Oh, we have something really special here,’” Mabberley recalls. Hoffman experienced “absolutely the exact same moment, it was mutual love.” From there, the two have been producing work with their particular blend of enthusiasm and genuine female experience. “I feel like we started writing, inspired by our own mistakes in life,” Mabberley says, “and we’ve been able to expand that into more of the female perspective.” 

As part of Pi Theatre’s Provocateurs Series (which Hoffman calls, “a match made in heaven”), the comedians are exploring this female perspective in the four-part series Lady Parts, a night of “true stories and satirical sketch” that “[take] the piss out of what it means to be a woman.”

In line with After Party’s intention to foster the careers of women in comedy, Lady Parts features around 10 female-identified performers each show. Hoffman and Mabberley gratefully cite the Canadian and BC Arts Councils, whose grants have allowed them to pay their performers reasonable wages. After all, as Hoffman says, employing women in good comedic roles, “giving them parts – Lady Parts…is what the show is all about, really.”

Lady Parts’ performers span a range of mediums, from improv to visual art, and the guests are similarly diverse. “It’s really important for us to have performers of colour involved,” Mabberley expresses.

“Diverse women of all sorts,” adds Hoffman. This inclusive eye extends to the female perspective, and the non-binary lenses therein.

“A lot of our audience is male or gender diverse,” Mabberley explains, “even though…we are speaking from a…cis-wom[a]n female perspective, these issues are not just female issues.” “It affects everyone,” Hoffman agrees. “It’s societal what we’re trying to say here.”

In the shows’ sold-out third installment, Hearts, Lady Parts brought together actors Deb Williams and Alison Kelly, memoirist Emelia Symington Fetty, and Hip Hop artist JB The First Lady for a night all about the heart. The true stories were incredibly moving, mirroring the earnestness with which Mabberley and Hoffman conduct themselves. The honesty was striking, and I came away feeling bolstered, heartened by it.

Due to increasing popularity, it was also the show’s first time in a larger venue.

“These issues are so important to me, but to see that it’s actually really important to other people is giving us that boost we need to keep pushing it,” Hoffman explains. This gives Mabberley the feeling that “the end of episode four [Vaginas—which the two anticipate will be “bat shit crazy”] is not the end of Lady Parts.” Indeed, they are already in talks with Pi to possibly extend the series.

Mabberley and Hoffman gush about the companies, venues, and woman-forward Vancouver comedy shows that have supported and paved the way for them. This community support, along with their tight creative collaboration, fuels their vision for what After Party Theatre can accomplish. Besides plans to tour their much-lauded play The After After Party, their goals include producing the work of comedic female playwrights and a high school-appropriate version of Lady Parts. Ultimately, Hoffman says, “I think we’re just going to keep hustling our shit.” Amen to that.

Elizabeth is a writer, actor, and full-time nerd living on Unceded Coast Salish Territories. With a BA in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice, she is passionate about media that challenges norms, beliefs, and mainstream representation. You can find her listening to true crime podcasts and trying to find good places to dance (she’ll take recommendations).