HIT plays from 23 year-old out of work actors are scarcer than pink diamonds but since Stefanie Preissner delivered โSolpadeine is my Boyfriendโ to the world, well, the world just canโt get enough.
She acts alone in this short (60-minute) play set in the milieu of disenfranchised twenty-somethings. Reared in the boom years of expectations, earnings, credit and spend, they now find themselves at sea like flotsam, if not already overseas looking for work.
Itโs a dark comedy that sold out when premiered at the Dublin based 2012 Absolut Fringe theatre festival. โSolpadeine is my Boyfriendโ, directed by Gina Moxley and produced by With an โFโ Productions, was nominated for two awards.
โNo, I did not expect that much success when I wrote it,โ Preissner admits. โSo much work goes into writing a play that it is great to get life out of it and two years is just great.โ
Success is all the more surprising as this creative stopped writing for five years after her dรฉbut work โOur Fatherโ, again with an autobiographical element, failed: โIt was gloriously awful, overly sentimental.โ
Preissner continued training and working as an actor and had proper expectations โ โdrama school can give one a false sense of worthโ โ but reality and the crash bit.
She explains the appeal of โSolpadeine is my Boyfriendโ, downloaded in countries everywhere from the RTE podcast, as โpeople really connecting with it. Itโs hard to know the demographic of each audience but people from aged 13 to 90 have seen the playโ.
The play is built on the poles of depression, immigration and addiction, following the journey of a girl from Cork to Dublin in search of work and love.
At Lime Tree Theatre, Thursday November 21 only, at 8pm.