When I first created my show Confessions of a Redheaded Coffeeshop Girl, it was meant to be a cheeky, one-woman story about tackling your early 20s head-on – the tale of a bright-eyed millennial barista with an anthropology degree, navigating her “temporary” side job while chasing her big dreams.
So writes Rebecca Perry, creator and performer of ‘Confessions of a Redheaded Coffeeshop which is Fringe bound this August…
Ten years later, the show has found a whole new audience in Gen Z – and what’s startling is how much harder those early frustrations now hit home for them too. What once felt like a glitch in the system — the overqualified anthropologist serving lattes to pay rent and make her student loans — turns out to have been the system all along. Back then, we believed the slog was a momentary phase. A temporary rite of passage. That if we just hustled hard enough, we’d graduate from side gigs into magically having a career in our field. But somewhere along the way, our barista jobs turned into our full-time jobs. The Matrix we thought we were hacking? We were already deep inside it.
What I love about Gen Z is how clearly they see it. I had a Gen Z reviewer in Toronto sum it up perfectly: “If your life’s a mess, you might as well treat it like a safari — observe the madness, document the patterns, and try not to get eaten.” That’s exactly the lens Coffeeshop Girl offers. Joanie doesn’t just survive the jungle of customer service; she builds a playful taxonomy of it. She studies her customers like exotic animals and takes pride in her ecosystem. She makes the mess fun.
What’s funny is how much Gen Z and millennials have in common, even if we pretend we don’t. We both inherited a world of broken promises, rising costs, and jobs that didn’t line up with our educations. The difference is that Gen Z isn’t pretending this is temporary. They know it’s the Matrix, and instead of trying to escape it, they’re redesigning it.
They work smarter. They protect their peace. They’re turning survival into strategy — monetising side hustles, curating portfolio careers, making lemonade out of student loan lemons. If Joanie were written today, she might not be a barista at all. She’d probably be the coffee shop’s social media manager, designing reels about her coffeeshop jungle between oat milk orders.
One of the most joyful responses I get to the show is: “I feel seen.” That’s why Coffeeshop Girl still lands — because Joanie isn’t just “stuck,” she’s scrappy. She sees the world with rose-tinted glasses, while still being resourceful. She’s not wasting her degree; she’s using it in weird, beautiful, surprising ways. She turns her café into a jungle, her customers into animals, her frustrations into observations. She becomes the David Attenborough of the coffee shop.
As a tail-end millennial who is on the cusp of this generation and the next, I’ve mentored a lot of young artists and watched this generational shift in real time. Where millennials felt guilty about side gigs and were told to keep their hustle quiet, Gen Z wears it proudly. They’ll crowdfund a tour, pitch a brand partnership, and film a behind-the-scenes TikTok all before noon. It’s not just ambition, it’s survival instinct. They send more cold call emails in a week than I did after my first year of graduation.
And honestly, it’s inspiring. It’s where I’m taking my cues from.
I recently went to a Gen Z friend’s birthday party which was sponsored by a local cider brand, so the alcohol was covered for the night. They got the venue cost covered – far more than they would have been able to afford – in exchange for posting pictures they’d be taking anyway. That’s not just clever, it’s visionary.
But alas, of course, there’s still burnout. There’s still that feeling, familiar to both generations, of being expected to do everything at once: perform the work, make the work, manage the admin, plan the next move, all while having flawless social media. I used to think being a classical actor meant choosing one path. Now, I identify as a creator, I follow all paths at once. And Joanie, the Redheaded Coffeeshop Girl, embodies that too. She refuses to give up her passion just because it doesn’t pay the bills — but she also refuses to suffer while she waits.
That’s what resonates across generations. Boomers mocked us for loving avocado toast, but honestly? Sometimes the best part of your week is a perfect flat white. We’ve learned to cling to small joys in a world that feels perpetually on fire. Coffee shop culture, in its own way, is resistance — a place to pause, connect, recharge.
In the end, what started as a solo show about post-grad confusion, has become something much deeper — a way to make sense of a system that never made sense to begin with. Gen Z might be better at navigating it, but the absurdity remains. Which is why the shows embraces comedy & the absurd. Because just maybe, the secret isn’t to escape it, but to treat it like a safari. Watch closely. Take notes. Laugh when you can. And just live in the moment, in the mess.
The Matrix is real. But the lemonade’s not bad.
Rebecca Perry will be taking her show “Confessions of a Redheaded Coffeeshop Girl” to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.
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