plays
WHY PLUTO IS A PLANET (2011)
“They say that when you die your life flashes before you in a second. But on Pluto time’s mad slow. It takes Pluto 248 years or 90,918 earth days to orbit the sun. And then its own rotation takes like 6 earth days and 9 hours, so maybe if you die on Pluto, your life would flash by really slowly. “
A gay teenager travels to Pluto to meet Marilyn Monroe, cope with the crush and crash of first love, and decide whether or not life is for him after all. Selected as part of the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival, 2011. Read an interview about the play here.
THE MAP OF LOST THINGS (2010)
“There was something magical about Tír na nÓg. Nobody ever got old or sick. There was no mortgage repayments or beeping alarm clocks, no need for cataracts or zimmerframes. In many ways it was perfect. But some nights something rustled under Oisín’s skin, awoke him beside his always perfectly sleeping wife.”
A king is in love with a butterfly, Deirdre is smashing her head in, a salmon is quoting Ulysses and everywhere you look, swan feathers…A funny, dark and lyrical reworking of Celtic myths combining puppets, live music and the magic of Tír na nÓg. Selected for the First Irish Festival, 2010.
AN ALPHABET OF PLUTO (2010)
“Dear Mr. Chairperson of the International Association of Astronomers, please make Pluto a proper planet again. Because being a dwarf sucks. Not that dwarves shouldn’t have equal rights or more stepladders in public places. But don’t we need a planet of the underworld, now more than ever? ”
An Alphabet of Pluto’ journeys to an outerspace underworld via several stories stacked inside each other like babushka dolls. Pocahontas meets a budding Galileo in 1610; schoolchildren search for Planet X in 1916; a young boy tries to save Pluto’s planetary status in 2006; aliens meet archivists in 2204 and a lost astronaut drifts through several centuries of time and space. A rehearsed reading staged at The Guildford Lane Gallery, with live music and original art.
ABIGAIL (2009)
“The two cuddled up together, curling into the shadows of silences. The two had such times that if you caught their happiness in a net, it could fill a ballroom.”
Staged as part of ‘Puppet Playlist 2: The Magnetic Fields’ held by Sinking Ship Productions at The Tank, Abigail, Belle of Kilroanan is inspired by the song of the same name from The Magnetic Field’s ’69 Love Songs’. Mixing puppets, live music and words this short piece follows the whimsical and painful journey of a WW2 soldier who, after years frozen in ice, travels to the underworld to find Abigail, his longed for love.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JONAH (2008)
“You want to keep me in these pictures. Because in these rectangles I can’t fail. I can never grow old or gain weight or loose hope or loose stock. I won’t give up, I won’t turn to drink, I won’t cheat on my girlfriend. I’ll be perfect forever. “
A teenager travels to New York to investigate the disappearance of his brother and uncovers a web of relationships as complicated as the subway map. Staged by Aporia Theatre as part of the DC and New York Fringe Festivals; originally staged at Georgetown University as part of the Donn B. Murphy One Act’s Festival in 2003.
AFTER HIPPOLYTUS (2008)
“Item: one hundred and four salt cellars. Lot kept every salt cellar he encountered, thinking it might be his wife. He had wanted to keep her of course, had run to find utensils big enough, but when he came back, she’d blown away in the breeze.”
A modern update of the Hippolytus myth. As a janitor and a colourful chorus sift through the garbage-archive of love, they uncover Echo’s mixed tape for Narcissus, Abelard’s letters to Heloise, a stained blue dress belonging to a young intern and the buried story of a conservative Congresswoman whose new husband falls for her stepson. Staged at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York alongside The Rainbow Monologues.
AN AIR BALLOON ACROSS ANTARCTICA (2007)
“I want to see the majesty of the icebergs and feel the tingle of the Southern Wind and bask in the glory of the aurora borealis, okay the aurora australis, it’s not the facts that are important, it’s the feeling, a world where everything is white, with no boundaries or bondage or places or people.”
Caitlin travels across Antarctica in an air-balloon accompanied by a hamster with an identity complex, the ghosts of several explorers, and one urn that she can’t let go of. Originally staged at The Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2004 (where it was nominated for a Green Room Award for Best New Writing), Air Balloon was remounted by Three to a Room in 2007 and toured to Edinburgh and Adelaide. It was also staged by the invisible company at the New York Fringe Festival in 2007 (image above).
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