Crash Course is a new storytelling show written and performed by Nicole Hardy and Jennifer Warnick. The show will make its debut from June 5-8, 2025 at Seattle's Theatre Off Jackson, 409 7th Ave. S.

In 1999, two young Mormon women boarded a fake airline flight only to swiftly meet their fake doom. Nicole Hardy was a 22-year-old college student dreaming of world travel but already being pressured to marry young. Jennifer Warnick was a 15-year-old aspiring paleontologist who hadn’t even been on a real airplane yet. The two lived 800 miles apart and wouldn’t meet for another 16 years, yet both perished aboard the same flight that summer.

 

Flight 409, a simulated plane crash with no survivors, was a wildly popular Mormon youth group activity that popped up in church gymnasiums all over North America in the 1990s. The faux crash was followed by an elaborate, angel-led tour of the afterlife designed to inspire righteousness but also to help young Latter-day Saints realize that every single decision on earth, from uttering a swear word to drinking coffee to pre-marital sex, comes with eternal consequences.

 

Nicole and Jennifer, both born into “The One True Church,” started out determined to fulfill their spiritual destiny as obedient Mormon women, wives, and mothers. But not long after the crash of Flight 409, both of them slowly started to realize the straight and narrow path was far too straight, and far too narrow.

 

Nicole’s biological clock was stuck on snooze, so dedicating herself to homemaking felt more like: Pick someone decent, abandon your dreams, make jam and die. Meanwhile, Jen was facing an eternity stuck in the closet with only a collection of floral Sunday dresses and the church softball team to keep her warm.

 

In this hilarious and heartbreaking storytelling extravaganza, the audience will board the fateful Flight 409 alongside Sister Hardy and Sister Warnick before taking off on a wild romp through heaven, hell, the roller derby arena, the salsa club and beyond. Will they find the courage to leap from the only life they’ve ever known with no parachute, no map, and no idea how to survive the fall? 

 

Crash Course is a show for people interested in: Sinning, Mormonism, swashbuckling adventures, dinosaurs, gay stuff, Enya, awkward coming-of-age stories, feminism, sex, and wanting to be loved for exactly who you are.

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