Associate Professor Angie Farrow

Angie Farrow’s short play ‘The Blue Balloon’ has won Best Wildcard Award at the Sydney Short and Sweet Festival Gala Finals in March.  This is the biggest short play festival in the world with over 1,000 international entries.  The Blue Balloon won two ‘Judges Choice’ competitions before being selected for the finals.

The Blue Balloon has also previously won first prize in a Canadian international playwriting competition, the Toronto-based InspiraTO Theatre Contest, in 2013.

The play – metaphorical and surreal – is about a relationship breakdown, and sees the grieving male protagonist releasing a blue balloon that engulfs his city and its inhabitants. The balloon is a liberating presence, prompting characters to think, say, feel and do things they hadn’t thought possible.The story, inspired by writer Ronald Bartlheme’s The Red Balloon and influenced by the likes of Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, takes an imaginative punt on the existential notion of how to free the human psyche so it can revel in pure visionary, expressive wonder.

“The blue balloon is a metaphor and is antidote to the usual constraints, rules and conventions that prevent us being more expansive, and more truly alive,” Dr Farrow says.

Dr Farrow says she loves the idea of short theatre tackling bold, challenging ideas in a short space of time. And she reckons the short play might be entering its heyday, with busy lives and short attention spans demanding artistic satisfaction in smaller chunks.

Describing short plays as “haiku theatre where you say big things in small spaces,” she says her success is particularly pleasing because there are so few competitions for playwrights.

“It’s a frustrating area in that sense. There are dozens of competitions for short stories, but for theatre there are very few – they are like gold,” says Dr Farrow, who has written 10 short plays, including prize-winners such as Tango Partner, Falling and Lifetime.