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Tonie Walsh My connections with ThisIsPopBaby go
back a long time, long before the group was formally constituted. Producer Jenny Jennings has often regaled me with stories of being at warehouse parties I did under the Horny Organ Tribe/Elevator banner in the mid-1990s. She would have been a teenager at the time, connected with the work of The Corn Exchange, the Commedia del Arte group set up by my dear friend Annie Ryan and whose work I championed on the cusp of The Septic Tiger. I can’t take credit for inventing the type of mixed-media, multi-disciplinary event that was Elevator but it was unique for its time in Ireland, shook up the entertainment scene and was the making of the Ormond Multimedia Centre. And it was like honey to a bee for Jenny, so no surprise that our paths would cross again many years later and we would end up doing similar-themed events at Electric Picnic, etc. Philly McMahon would co-write my one man show, I Am Tonie Walsh, that ThisIsPopBaby premiered at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre in Winter 2018. When he first set me the task of writing my life story I couldn’t imagine how we could turn it into a coherent and compelling piece of [quite dark] theatre but that’s his extraordinary gift as a dramaturge. Philly was the first person to call me “chicken”, aeons ago when he was moonlighting behind the bar in a wee speakeasy called Centre Stage on Parliament Street. I remember it quite clearly as he also pinched my arse and I devoted a paragraph to it in my journal. Years later, he and Jenny got me to curate an exhibition on the history of LGBT Pride in Ireland. It went up as part of the Queer Notions cultural sidebar to Dublin Pride. That was about ten years ago. Such a brilliant and necessary intervention in public discourse, not unlike what ThisIsPopBaby has attempted with Where We Live. Not enough people are doing this type of utterly critical work and I laud them for it. Philip Connaughton I started working with ThisIsPopBaby in 2012. I was back-and-forth between Dublin and Barcelona at the time, but they got me in to be one of the cast members of Alice in Funderland at the Abbey, and it was the beginning of such an excellent and amazing experience. One of the first things that it did was make me return to Ireland and live here permanently. I had never really considered doing that, as I had been away since I was 15 and that was quite a long time. I was really amazed by the energy; that it was fresh, exciting, bright, and that there were new things happening. We were bringing musical theatre to the Abbey, but in a way that had not been done before. That finished and it just went on and on. I started choreographing for them as my own choreography work developed, and I felt I was part of this incredibly exciting and creative family, and that hasn’t changed. One of the things I love about Philly and Jenny and the ThisIsPopBaby team is the work ethic that exists in the room. It’s such a creative and collaborative space. I don’t know if this all sounds like bullshit, Tom Creed I’ve worked with ThisIsPopBaby on four productions so far – All Over Town (2009), Trade (2011), I Am Tonie Walsh (2018) and Sure Look It, Fuck It (2019) – with another one coming down the tracks very soon. Why do I return again and again to a company that I’ve worked with more than any other over the past decade? It might be the finger they have on the pulse of the nation, the sense of what artists are burning to make and what the public is hungry to see. The different kinds of performance that find a home in the ThisIsPopBaby tent, from quiet new drama to fierce cabaret, that become richer for being seen alongside each other. The trust they place in artists, their ferociously keen eyes for what makes good theatre and their determination for the people they work with to do their best and give their all. The way they understand that the best work takes time, the way they stick with an idea and don’t let it go when the going gets tough. The trust their audiences place in them. The deep seriousness that underpins all the fun. I hope I get to work with them forever. but it’s genuinely how I feel. All of the projects I do with them, you never get tired of working with them. There’s such an energy, an infectious energy for getting in the room and making stuff happen. They put so much faith in you and really allow people to grow, it’s such a great thing. I’m very fond of them. I love them both. I’m very grateful for how they’ve inspired my work, and how they’ve let me help them. 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. 26