Humour and insight in show about love and visas

Actor and writer Sonya Kelly has a happy knack of turning her own life into drama – funny and successful drama at that. Her 2011 show, The Wheelchair on My Face, about her first pair of childhood glasses was developed and produced by Fishamble, and premiered at the 2011 Dublin Fringe,

Since then it has been performed at home and abroad, picking up a Scotsman Fringe First Award and being named as The New York Times Critics’ Pick.

While that show was ongoing, Sonya’s Australian partner Kate was having visa difficulties in Ireland, which has provided the basis for Sonya’s new show How To Keep An Alien.

Kate had been granted a year-long visa for Ireland but it expired shortly after she met Sonya.  Their only hope of being together was if they could prove to immigration authorities here that they were a real couple.

“You are going into buildings you never knew existed, asking people you never thought you’d meet for things that mattered,” says Sonya of the process.

It politicised her, she adds. “It made me wonder about who wants to get into the country and why and made me think about Direct Provision.”

Then there was the fact that over 150 years ago Kate’s great-great grandmother, left Ireland for Queensland, Australia, a link Sonya uses to remind people that immigration is not a new phenomenon.

Kate and Sonya hadn’t known each other too long when they began seeking a ‘de facto’ visa, allowing Kate to stay here. It meant the had to document everything for immigration officials, which put a certain pressure on their relationship, Sonya recalls.

But they survived and their experience has become a humorous, touching and revealing story that won the Tiger Dublin Fringe Best Production award, as well as four- and five-star reviews from critics in Ireland, the UK and Australia. It played at Brisbane Festival in 2014 and at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

The show also documents their internal monologues of worries and insecurities, but in a funny way, she says. “There are lots of heroes and villains in the 75 minutes!”

Although it’s a one-woman show, its stage manager Justin Murphy, is onstage throughout, operating lights and sound from there and also performing.

“That was a happy accident,” says Sonya. “He did it for the initial reading and the audience loved it. Now I couldn’t imagine the show without him.”

Sonya is currently touring Ireland with How To Keep An Alien. It’s being presented by Rough Magic and directed by Gina Moxley who also directed The Wheelchair on My Face.

■ It will be performed in the Town Hall Theatre on Tuesday, October 6. Tickets €18/16 from tht.ie, 091-569777 and the box office.