Sorority Slumber Party Massacre: The Musical

By Alicia Ward

Sorority Girls Slumber Party Massacre: The Musical is the title of a play that sounds ridiculous, but lives up to its hilarious nature. Even the talents at Scorpio Theatre who are putting on this comedic musical are killing themselves laughing.

“It’s all about the funny,” laughs director Jamie Eastgaard, assuring audiences that they will not be trembling in their seats.

“An absolute riot! From start to finish it’s nothing but fun. The songs are great and they’re slightly campy and they’re just so funny.

“This is probably one of the most fun shows I’ve done,” concurs Chelsea Millard, who brings the character of Jewel to life.

“Most people have said that they expected it to be a lot more serious and dark and that it was a lot more fun than they were expecting.”

Sorority Girls Slumber Party Massacre: The Musical spoofs every horror movie that has ever been made in a light-hearted, crowd-pleasing, dazzling show about a sorority pledge night. Unfortunately for the soon-to-be-sisters, a murderer is on the loose and killing the pink-clad beauties one by one. The cast, however, thinks the play is more funny than gory.

“What is the show about? The show is, uh . . . cheese. The show itself is a fun, cheesy, kind of campy spoof on ’80s horror movies,” laughs Bryan Smith, who plays Alvin.

Eastgaard pushes his actors to play up the ridiculous stereotypes in the show, by allowing the actors to perform as outrageously as they could and then pulling them back. Eastgaard believes that finding the outrageous stereotypes and playing them up is the key to the musical’s comic success.

“We tried to make it cheesy-good, not cheesy-bad,” explains Eastgaard.

Eastgaard and Millard both admit that finding the balance between “cheesy-good” and “cheesy-bad” was not always an easy task.

In the process of playing her character, Millard took to exploring a whole new side of herself.

“It was quite difficult to find that fine line between cheesy-good and cheesy-bad, but we found that the more fun we started to have with it, the more cheesy-good it became,” explains Millard.

The fun continues throughoutthe process of creating the show. The cast continually gushes about the musical as well as their colleagues without prompt and while staying completely genuine. Sorority Girls Slumber Party Massacre: The Musical is a gem of a show, even if only for the fun the cast had and the personal touches they added on the fly.

Eastgaard agrees with this. “I don’t think there was one rehearsal where someone didn’t do something ridiculous [and I said] ‘No! No! Keep that!’”

Keith Kollee, another of the show’s actors, further explains the extent to which the actors enjoyed themselves and pushed themselves to ham up the play.

“Let’s be honest, this isn’t Hamlet. We’re not [performing] high theatre right now. We do that sometimes, but we’re not doing that right now.”

Kollee has also been called the unofficial on-set horror consultant and expert during show preparation due to what he deems as a “misspent youth” watching numerous horror movies. As a result of this, the cast and crew were made privy to a slew of obscure horror jokes found within the script that only a true horror movie buff could spot.

Kollee might be a horror buff, but interestingly enough, he turns to soap opera actors for inspiration when it comes to his character of Dr. Loopis.

“A fairly solid staple of the old slasher films is the venerable actor who actually has made some sort of name for himself [by] coming into these movies and lending an air of credibility to them. But typically they didn’t care much for the role, they were paycheques for them and so you actually ended up getting a rather wooden performance out of what should have been the best actor in the film,” explains Kollee.

Kollee also provides insight into the finer (albeit obvious) points of horror movies.

“[Slasher films] generally involve young women in various sleezy exploits getting killed rather nastily,” laughs Kollee.

Even if the audience is not filled with horror movie buffs, the cast is positive that their show contains something for everyone, including some jokes to satisfy even the most naive of audience members.

Besides hilarity, though, the play also boasts of lovable characters.

“Alvin, for all intents and purposes, is a nerd,” begins Smith. “There’s always the little brother-type character who you see in all these horror movies who is trying to match his sibling’s expectations. It’s so unbelievably awkward that it’s uncomfortable . . . the kind-of-cute . . . pinch-your-cheeks kind of character.”

Growing into their characters was incredibly fun for the actors. For Kollee especially, it was also fun to watch the almost all-girl cast try to embody a “blonder” sense of self, but this play appealed to all involved as early on as the first read-through. Millard in particular found the song “There’s a Severed Head in the Toilet Bowl” almost too much to handle in terms of its hilarity.

Whether horror movie fans or not, audiences will enjoy Sorority Girls Slumber Party Massacre: The Musical as the actors’ committment to this show is sure to shine out in its performance quality.

Perhaps Millard sums it all up when she once again laughs at a behind-the-scenes story.

“We’ve had nothing but fun.”