Hey, Miss! _{by Madelaine Empson}

This NZ International Comedy Festival, Keegan Thomas and Aaron James Douglas will take to a stage they’ve always craved: an empty high school classroom. Hey, Miss! begins when a teacher storms out of detention, leaving two attention-deprived theatre kids both unsupervised and unwilling to sit in silence. No teachers + no rules? Total chaos.

Crashing into the Cavern Club from the 7^th to the 9^th of May, this hour of carnage mashes sketch, improv, character, and storytelling comedy to capture the absurdity of teenage life… but not in today’s world. No, Hey, Miss! dives into the delightful cringe of growing up in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Aside from questionable fringe cuts, Lynx Africa permeating gym-room nostrils, and oversharing on Facebook, I asked Thomas for his twilight zone memories of the era.

“Oh it feels so weird remembering that we had to pay for texts – 20c a text”, Thomas says, hitting a little too close to home for my millennial brain. “So you only had a finite amount of time to seal the deal with your crush or fork out another $10 top-up or plead with Vodafone for one more IOU.”

Ouch.

Part nostalgia trip, part identity crisis, and part beautifully dumb celebration of who we used to be, Hey, Miss! stars its two writers – absurd one-man variety act Douglas and “national treasure in the making” (Wellyott) Thomas – alongside a different guest comedian each night in the role of the long-suffering teacher. Anything can happen so everything probably will. Hold onto your chair… just mind the gum underneath.