Studio Shorts

Play #1 Small Box Psychosis
Written by Barry McKinley
Directed by Óran O'Rua

Play #2 The Philadelphia
Written by David Ives
Directed by Brian Molloy

Play #3 Bar and Ger
Written by Geraldine Aron
Directed by Gary Wall

Performed in the The Mill Theatre Studio, Dundrum - Tuesday 22 to Saturday 25 February 2012

'Small Box Psychosis'

The first play of the evening was 'Small Box Psychosis' written by Barry McKinley. The story is set in a very small box. A lawyer takes an elevator to his apartment on the 14th floor of a building in New York City. Charlie, the elevator operator, stops the elevator between floors and forces the lawyer to change clothes with him at gunpoint.

The plot thickens when the other elevator operator, Eddie, appears - in drag. It transpires that he has been 'dipping' into the lives of the tenants, slipping into some of the women's' clothes and listening to private conversations between tenants through the ventilation shafts. The facts get a little foggy as do the characters when they smoke this entertaining example of absurdist theatre to a 'high point'. The original plan was to kill the lawyer, whose perceived condescending, patronising attitude has catalysed Charlie's latent anger. However, they all decide to cover their tracks by killing Schacht's wife, who it seems from the overheard conversations, has been cheating on Schacht. And, in keeping with where we've been taken in their bizarre little world, Charlie and Eddie decide to live together happily ever after.

Well, not quite. It turns out that, "it-was-all-just-a-dream", or a passing fantasy conjured up in the mind of the lawyer as he waited for the elevator to climb to the dizzy heights of his 14th floor apartment - as you do!

 

The Philadelphia

The playwright David Ives is known for creating parodoxical comedy. One full-length example of his work in this genre is the play in six acts called 'All in the Timing'.

 

In 'The Philadelphia' he created a much shorter work. It's a clever and funny piece, placed in a restaurant and centred around a mind-bending experience where everything is not how it should be. In fact the world for these characters flips in and out of alternative perceptions like a photograph switching from positive to negative.

 

It's a ten minute snapshot of a man who has fallen into a Twilight-Zone-like state in which he cannot get anything he asks for. He is in a "Philadelphia" according to his worldly wise buddy Al. He learns from Al that the only way out of the dilemma is to ask for the opposite of what he wants. But things in this world don't stay still for very long ....

 

'The Philadelphia' was directed by Brian Molloy. Last year, Brian directed another David Ives play, 'Time Flies', in the Studio and a full length production of 'Unoriginal Sin' by David Tristram for Balally Players.

 

 

 

'Bar and Ger'

The writer of 'Bar and Ger', Geraldine Aron, was born in Galway, but spent most of her adult life in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. She wrote several award winning plays for The Druid Theatre Company.

'Bar and Ger' was first performed at The Space Theatre, in Cape Town in 1975 and has been performed all over the world and has won several awards.

It is the tender, often funny, but simple story of the relationship between a sister (the author) and her younger brother. The story, which is described in realistic and down to earth language, follows their lives from childhood with a combination of episodic flashes through the years and the sister's narrative.

This third play of the evening was co-directed by Gary Wall and Fiona Walsh.

This was Fiona's second time directing with Balally Players. She directed 'Medea' in the Mill Studio in 2011.

Gary's last production as director was 'The Plough and the Stars' in 2010 which competed in the All Ireland Three Act Festival picking up a number of awards along the way.

 

'Small Box Psychosis'

Mr Schacht Charlie Eddie   Director

Sean T. Daly Ronan Horgan Pat O'Grady   Óran O'Rua

'The Philadelphia'

Waitress Al Mark   Director

Claire O'Donovan Brian Molloy Sean Murphy   Brian Molloy

'Bar and Ger'

Bar Ger   Directors

Joe McCarthy Aoibhinn Finnegan   Gary Wall & Fiona Walsh

Crew

Lighting Stage Manager Make Up Production

Paul Macken Lorraine O'Hagan Teresa Dempsey Claire O'Donovan

 

Picture Gallery

Photographs from productions are stored on the SmugMug.com site. The Balally Players SmugMug account allows for the viewing and downloading of images at various sizes if high resolution pictures have been uploaded. The slideshow can be run and stopped by clicking on the play (>) and pause (¦¦) icons. You can move forward and back by clicking on the right or left of the image. To go to the gallery of these images stored in the Balally Players pages of the SmugMug site visit www.balally.smugmug.com to see all of the available galleries of images where you can see and download larger copies of the images.

 

 

A big applause for a 'small box'

The three plays were performed in the small studio space at the Mill Theatre, Dundrum. The picture shows Sean Daly, Pat O'Grady and Ronan Horgan taking a bow and acknowledging the applause of a very appreciative audience after their perfromance of the first play of the evening, 'Small Box Psychosis'.

 

'Studio Shorts' programme

 

The programme for 'Studio Shorts' is available here as a PDF file (907KB). To open the document, left-click on the link above. To download a copy, right-click on the link above and select "Save as....."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures taken at a performance on Wednesday 23 February 2012

The full set of pictures taken during the performance are in the slideshow above, just below the cast and crew credits. Here's a small selection of the pictures taken. To view and/or download any of the pictures, visit www.balally.smugmug.com to see the '2012 - Studio Shorts' gallery and all of the available collections of images.