"IT’S a really classic first play – there are so many ideas crammed into one thing.”

For Haley McGee, Oh My Irma began as a two-minute poem at acting school, before developing into a multi-award-winning one-woman show.

“I used to do three hours a week with this amazing playwright Sheldon Rosen, called Theatre Creation,” says the Canadian writer and performer at the centre of Oh My Irma. “Immediately he said to me, ‘You’re a writer, you should be writing’. “He encouraged me and had this amazing ability as a dramaturg to hear what I had written and ask questions which opened doors in the world that had come out of my imagination.”

The poem turned into a five-minute monologue, performed as part of a cabaret for emerging artists. Before long McGee was approached by theatres to expand it first into 15, then 35 minutes, eventually turning it into the internationally touring show it is now.

Oh My Irma tells the story of Mission Bird, a socially inept young woman desperate to connect with people, who finds herself defending herself against a crime she has committed, but which she claims wasn’t her fault.

“When I started doing the piece, I didn’t figure out what she had done,” admits McGee. “I knew she had committed a crime, that she had a relationship with a woman called Irma, and that she would show up at a man’s house who happened to have a dog called Irma.

“The first time I did the 15-minute version I knew what she had done – I just found it out on my feet.”

The whole story is told from Mission’s point of view.

“I do think we only know a story from our side,” says McGee. “I was curious to explore a really one-sided story and play with the idea of a slightly unreliable narrator.”

She describes Mission as coming from a really miniscule version of an element of herself.

“I don’t know what part of myself it is – I guess the part that feels uncomfortable socially,” she says. “There’s a deep loneliness and desperation not to be alone any more in Mission, but it leads to the character doing something really self-destructive.

“When I developed the character, I realised she’s an adult who hasn’t accepted she’s gone through puberty. She’s stunted and precocious.”

In developing the piece McGee looked to other popular Canadian solo works, such as Joe The Perfect Man by Rachelle Elie – “a woman in a wig and fat suit who auditions to play Macbeth” – and I Claudia, by Kristen Thomson, about a 12-year-old girl whose parents are divorcing, which is told using masks to change character.

Mission can only tell the truth about what has really happened through the guise of poetry.

“It’s using different forms to get to the heart of the story,” says McGee.

“My dad is an English professor and Shakespeare scholar, so I grew up with a love of language. I was always being pushed in terms of the vocabulary I used.”

The play won the best production award at New York’s United Solo Theatre Festival last year, and this week received a special commendation at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, where McGee is speaking from.

“I had really great audiences,” says McGee. “It was so weird. When I did my tech rehearsal the Dutch technician said the show was going to be very challenging for Dutch speakers because I play with language. For the first show I really focused on communicating with the audience – because it’s a solo show I could call in and see if things were landing.”

Now she is working on other plays, including a six-character piece which she doesn’t intend to star in.

“I’m really excited. In October I’m going to the Stratford Festival where I’ve got a playwriting residency. It’s going to be three weeks where they will house me and feed me and give me time and space to write,” she says.

“I’m getting a lot of encouragement to take Mission Bird and put her in different places. I have been making little videos for people who donated money for my tour, so I’ve been bringing her out in public. I like taking her out of the context of the play.

“I’ve been playing with the character since 2008 – she’s really in there. It was amazing to come back to it again and again, to correct things. When you produce something for the first time, you sometimes have to use a Band Aid to fix problems – this way I was able to go back and see if I could actually fix it.”

  • Starts 7.30pm, tickets from £7.50. Call 07800 983290