What happens in the girls room? Original Calgary play explores the fun and spilt tea
Posted Mar 27, 2025 5:38 pm.
Porcelain Dolls is set in the ladies room at a night club populated with people you may have met before.
There’s the girl with a massive purse and everything you need it in. The new mom who just needs to get drunk and forget the diapers. The party girl who wants to make sure everyone is having a great time. The ex-best friend. The bachelorette.
There are sink side build ups, and spilled tea breakdowns. Sounds like a party I’ve been to a few times.
The play runs at West Village Theatre until Apr. 5. It is an original script and a collaborative creation of Full Circle Theatre.
Erin Weir is a Co-Artistic Director at Full Circle Theatre, she also helped create the show and plays a role in it. She called Full Circle a little “baby” sized company.
“We’ve actually been around since 2011, but have taken breaks throughout,” she says.
Weir and Claire Bolton started the company after graduating from the University of Calgary with B.F.A.’s in Drama. Weir said they quickly realized that they would need to create their own opportunities to work in Calgary theatre.
Since then, the company has been creating original works to provide opportunity for artists.
Porcelain Dolls was actually first conceived in 2017 through improv, with 7 women brainstorming scenarios they had faced in the bar bathroom, throwing them into a fishbowl and pulling them out in combination with other random words and acting through it. They wound up shelving that work.
Weir said Porcelain Dolls was called back after auditions for another show last year.
“We had all of this phenomenal fem and non-binary actors come out and we couldn’t cast them all,” says Weir.
She said a priority for Porcelain Dolls was creating a middle aged role.
“So we could have a place for this older women who can’t play grandmas ,but are a little too old for T.V. moms,” she says.
Weir says the show was largely expanded to make room for all of the artists in want of a role.
Porcelain Dolls runs two hours and ticket information can be found here.
