Corinn deTorres and Illya deTorres are pictured above as Penny and Dean in the original production in 2013, and will reprise those roles in the upcoming production of “Varsity Werewolf Cheerleaders Live from Outer Space.”
Corinn deTorres and Illya deTorres are pictured above as Penny and Dean in the original production in 2013, and will reprise those roles in the upcoming production of “Varsity Werewolf Cheerleaders Live from Outer Space.”
“Varsity Werewolf Cheerleaders Live from Outer Space” has it all: sexy cheerleaders, rebellious youth, evil aliens, ’80s music, dance numbers and puppets. What more could a theatergoer want?
The musical begins in 1986, shortly after teen roller-derby girl Staci is moved to a small town to salvage her future. Then, a parasitic alien race crash lands in the woods and possesses her high school's varsity cheerleaders, so now it's up to Staci, the town's bad boy, Dean, and their grandparents to save the school, their town and the world.
The title was originally a joke that he told he told his then wife, Gea, when she asked him what his next screenplay was going to be, said Steve Coker, the writer/director of the show.
She laughed and said she would watch a movie called “Varsity Cheerleader Werewolves From Outer Space,” so Coker set out to write “an homage/parody of ’80s teen sci-fi horror films from my youth,” he said.
“A lot of those films in the ’80s had an agenda speaking out against sex and drug use in teens; in fact, in most of those movies, it was the characters who were sexually active or using drugs that ended up dead,” Coker noted.
He added that he wanted to play out that theme and then tie in all the “Big Bad Wolf” stories from children’s fables.
“If you pay attention, you will notice nods to ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ and ‘The Three Little Pigs’ throughout the show,” Coker said.
Anniversary performances
This production of “Varsity Werewolf Cheerleaders Live from Outer Space” marks the 10th anniversary performance of the show.
The first performances in 2013 were only 67 minutes long, had only two dance numbers and no live singing. The upcoming version of the production is now a full musical with 1980s classic songs performed by the actors and who are accompanied by a live, four-piece band.
The “Varsity Werewolf Cheerleader” experience first took off in 2013, when Coker was running a reader’s series for local screenwriters called “Script-O-Rama.” The event did live readings of screenplays for the public with images and sound effects to enhance the experience.
Coker’s original script of “Varsity Werewolf Cheerleaders Live from Outer Space” was a popular one with the public in that series, and he was asked to present it at the Jack London bar.
“I thought that a two-hour script being read aloud in a bar might not really go over well, so I decided to trim out some of the subplots and shorten the entire piece,” Coker said.
But then the actors said they would memorize the dialogue so they wouldn’t have to hold scripts, and then someone suggested costumes, music, dance and sound effects, and the next thing Coker knew, they were putting on a full-blown play.
“It was a huge success and ended up running for several weeks at a local theater venue to sold-out crowds,” he said.
After that, Coker kept being asked what was next, and so his production company StageWorks Ink was born.
Performing together again
Coker noted that he was not able to assemble the entire original cast from the 2013 production, but there are some from that version, some from the 2018 revival and some new cast members.
For Milwaukie audiences, this will be a chance to see Chapel Theatre owners Corinn and Illya deTorres perform together. They met in the original production, then married and now have two children.
“In the original and in this performance, I play Penny, who is one of the werewolf cheerleaders, and Illya plays Dean Jameson, the misunderstood bad kid,” Corinn de Torres said.
“For this production, I had planned to just choreograph the show, but as I thought about how Illya and I haven't performed together since before having kids, I wanted back in,” she said.
“We used to have so much fun working together on performance projects and we've missed it a lot.”
She added, “We get to see a different side of each other when working on our art that we don't always get to see at home. It's a gift to be able to do this together.”
She thinks the show is perfect for Chapel Theatre’s audience.
“It's grungy, spoofy, fun, loud, and packed with some really good talent,” she said.
Her favorite scenes are ones that involve the farmers and the cops, de Torres said, adding that the actors’ comedy and improv in those scenes are the best in the show.
Coker said it was impossible for him to choose a favorite scene, since he loves it from beginning to end.
‘Pure entertainment’
“This show is pure entertainment with belly laughs all the way through, in between some amazing ’80s music classics and surprises; the show has a lot of heart,” he said.
Coker noted that he wrote the show to take place in his hometown of Kalama, Washington, in 1986.
He added, “A lot of references to that area are in the show as little Easter eggs if you know the town and time period. But one of the coolest things is that all of the cheerleader uniforms and letterman jackets are actual vintage from my high school, borrowed from good friends for the production.”
