Circus child Petal has greasepaint in the blood

City Lives – Director of Blue Teapot Theatre, Petal Pilley talks to Bernie Ní Fhlatharta

Petal Pilley need ever dream of running away with the circus because she was practically raised on the road with the renowned Footsbarn Theatre company.

She was only seven years of age when she came to Galway with the Footsbarn troupe and little did she know then that her parents, Charmain and Rod Goodall would return a few years later to settle down in the City of the Tribes.

Footsbarn originated in the UK and specialised in Shakespearean plays but later the company settled in France and is still on the go.

“It was the early days of the Galway Arts Festival and I remember we were based at Fisheries Field. Years later, I did a FÁS scheme with Macnas and they were by then based in the same site.

“Like most people who come to Galway, my family came to love the Festival and the city and settled here. I say it’s like coming to the fairy fields. . .  you never leave once you come here!,” says a very relaxed Petal just hours away from the opening night of Sanctuary, a production by the Blue Teapot Company, of which she has been a director for the past seven years.

It is the company’s first time performing in the Arts Festival and Petal says she’s thrilled for them, as the cast themselves are very excited.

Sanctuary, a bittersweet story of sex and disability written by Christian O’Reilly got rave reviews last year after a ‘test’ performance and this world premiere for the Festival has already sold out for its four performances this week. It is being staged in the Blue Teapot’s base in Munster Avenue which only seats 64 at a time but Petal isn’t ruling out staging it again in a bigger venue later this year if she feels there’s a demand for it.

When Petal took over the role of director at the Blue Teapot, professional training was high on her priority list and she believes it was worth it.

“I didn’t want people to misunderstand lack of professional theatre training for disability. I wanted the group to get the best training and now we have a fully accredited school of performing art for people with disabilities.

“I approached the Arts Festival about being part of the event and once they saw the show, they said ‘yes’ and we have also been invited to do three shows at the Dublin Fringe Festival this September.”

It was also Petal who approached Christian about writing a play about people with disability. “I knew he could and he did,” she says. Christian attended the opening night of Sanctuary on Wednesday and was more than pleased apparently with the end result.

Petal loves working with the Blue Teapot and feels inspired by everyone there though it was obvious from the opening night that the cast equally look up to her.

Petal’s childhood sounds idyllic. For years, while Footsbarn were on a world tour, she and her two sisters were schooled on the road. There were about 18 children altogether and she still remembers legging it up onto the deck of the ferry to have their first look at “this exciting new land we were going to”.

It was Spain.

“We left Plymouth in the freezing cold and landed in Santander in Northern Spain on our way to Portugal,” she recalls. “We had left a grey and fairly conservative part of England. My parents were arty and experimental so we were always on the outside there. We fitted right in when we were touring.”

Petal went to school for a short while in Italy and still retains a little bit of Italian and French from those days with Footsbarn.

Without a doubt, she says, if she had children, she wouldn’t think twice about bringing them on the road as she loved every minute of it.