Mark O’Halloran

What I’ve always loved about ThisIsPopBaby is the freshness they bring to their work and their clear prospective. They have attempted to create a body of work that marries formal innovation with the energy and aesthetic of club-culture - and they have been extraordinarily successful at it. The work has been, at times; brash, hilarious, heart-breaking, entertaining, political, challenging and also wildly popular. They have cultivated a new audience too and turned them on to theatre. And I have loved being an audience member for all this.

Perhaps, I might not be the most obvious choice as ThisIsPopBaby collaborator. However, Jenny and Philly have always been amazingly supportive of my work and the things I wish to write about.

In 2011 they produced my play, Trade, at the Dublin Theatre festival. It was a delicate piece; a site-specific work, staged in a room of a functioning B&B on Great Denmark Street. To realise the work’s full potential the company put together an extraordinary team of designers, technicians, actors and director. Their unequivocal understanding of what the play needed and how best to deliver that made the process a joy to be part of, and at the Theatre Awards the following year we won the award for

Best New Play. Support and commitment to excellence are an all too rare commodity in this business and it is what marks out Jenny and Philip’s company.

This year they will be producing my new play, Conversations After Sex. The text itself has had a rather torturous development process but ThisIsPopBaby have remained completely committed to the work and what it is I hope to achieve. They really are a joy to work with. What more can I say.