Seventeen

Danielle Ward frames the show around unsolicited wisdom for teenage girls, using her own 1996 adolescence as an anti-guidebook. The angle is less pure nostalgia and more practical damage control. She contrasts the analog humiliations of the nineties, when mortifying oneself required stamps and snail mail, against modern pitfalls like online porn expectations and a broken rental market.

Between stand-up routines, Ward weaves in acoustic Britpop numbers, an explicit mime, and readings from her teenage diary. Material on female sexuality and bad celebrity encounters carries the hour, even when the broader advice structure wears thin.

Filmed by director Daniel Berg and self-funded before streaming service NextUp picked it up for distribution in 2018, the performance preserves a set first staged at Just the Tonic at the Caves during the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. At the time, Ward was transitioning toward full-time scriptwriting for television, having already spent years writing on series like The News Quiz and Not Going Out.