We'll always have Häagen-dazs.

Johnnie and Courtney Walker aren’t related, but they share unheard of influences in the post-narrative, post-process world of contemporary theatre.

“We’re music theatre junkies,” admits Courtney, as Johnnie espouses the virtues of West Side Story.

“I like plays. I like having a dramatic arc,” he admits. “I like characters, [ones] who talk to each other…”

Sure, but where’s the found text? The co-writers and directors of the second play at Bread and Circus this summer to star multiple girls and deal with sex, love and quarter-life ennui (the other was 36 Little Plays About Hopeless Girls), 8 Girls Without Boyfriends revels in a different sort of post-theatre. A dance solo homage to Chicago’s cellblock tango? Check. Snappy girl-on-girl retorts worthy of a Diablo Cody movie? Check. Musical solos that cross-check every performance trend in Toronto from electroclash to burlesque to stand-up comedy? You betcha.

Johnnie and Courtney met in Djanet Sears’ playwriting class at the University of Toronto. Courtney is the daughter of George F. Walker, and a contributing writer on TMN series The Line. Johnnie is a co-founder of Nobody’s Business Theatre Company, the artistic director of Boylesque T.O., and has written three full-length plays already. His last production was an acclaimed remount of Muhammad of Yorkville, his friendly, farcical play about the Muhammad cartoons as seen through the guise of contemporary art.

Today, he and his creative partner are talking about an equally culturally sensitive issue: getting dumped. The Walkers’ titular girls are strong, take-no-bullshit sirens, imitating the hilarious histrionics of Absolutely Fabulous and Annie Lennox with total abandon. And yet, what becomes of the broken-hearted? In one scene, a BFF advises her tearful friend to “stop dating assholes, start getting laid.” Though that sentiment has been tossed around the post-feminist landscape long enough to become a cliché, the creators link their play to something different, which they’ve both experienced: sob-choked phone calls from friends.

“When we started writing this play a year ago, nobody was getting dumped,” says Courtney. “But there was a period about four or five months ago when, for several of our friends, it was like Dumpfest 2009.”

“Neither of us is a girl without a boyfriend,” says Johnnie, “so we are ‘appropriating voice.’ I’m, like, doing the show in girl face.”

Appropriating, they do: all the single ladies deal with same-sex crushes, arthritis attacks, abusive exes and which neighbourhood to hit up for casual sex. (The answer? “Richmond — it’s easier to tell which guys are straight.”) Yet underneath the girls’ cool attitudes is a performance of pain: eight showstoppers exactly, as each girl enacts a loss of love, ranging from Morgan Norwich’s raccoon-eyed performance artist (a sign chained around her neck reads “The performer is the girlfriend”), to Julia Lederer’s fierce slam poet.

The Walkers aren’t trying to make light of girls in emotional pain: the girls are their own. Johnnie insists the laughs come from a real and all-too-relatable place, including a revision of his own “coming-out bake sale.” He proposes a sequel called “8 Guys Who Don’t Deserve Girlfriends,” though it would, arguably, be harder to write.

“I think I find it more difficult to write a good male role,” he says, as a playwright in a long but rare line of male playwrights who prefer to write for women. “I grew up among a lot of strong women; I’ve always had a lot of female friends. I don’t understand that Jerry Lewis/Christopher Hitchens ‘women aren’t funny’ philosophy, because I always find women much funnier. I have a lot of respect for women. I really like them better than men in a lot of ways.”