Seeing a comedy brings home the magic of theatre to Peadar Ó Lamhnaand friends at St Macartan's College in Monaghan

Hollywood writers are still on strike, and the film and television industries are in turmoil. Cue a show that hasn't come to a halt: Psycho Spaghetti, a stage comedy that Ger Carey created for a transition-year audience. No million-euro budget here. Only three desks, three chairs, three books, a whiteboard and one man who morphed from teacher and parent to teenager and even to baby in the womb.

The aim of the show was to get us teenagers to laugh at ourselves. We went on a journey through our lives so far, from before we were born to taking our first breath, the terrible twos, the first day at school and, finally, the teenage years.

From the word go we were laughing. Carey talked to imaginary characters who we really believed were there. He went into detail about what we were like when we were younger. The tantrums: "But I want it now!" The attention seeking: "Mammy, Mammy, look at me!" And all the silly stuff, such as eating dog food because we thought it would taste nice. Then he brought us to more recent times, when we suddenly changed from being innocent children into grumpy, "randy" teenagers.

We felt we were experiencing all the magic of a live performance. The show's material was spot on, and we all thought it was hilarious, insightful and utterly appealing. Even the teachers laughed. We found the French teacher particularly hilarious as Carey likened French to the language of "the dying cow", filling the stage with bovine character.

We loved Carey's accents, too. If I say that he was talking about Pinocchio being a "real boy" you should get the picture - or should I say the sound? It recalled our mortification when our voices broke in our early teens.

My favourite line of the play was when Carey was talking about how girls and boys pick on each other differently. "Boys give each other bruises; girls give each other eating disorders."

I would recommend the theatrical experience to all students and schools, as an interesting and humorous way to spend a day while learning to laugh at yourself at the same time.

This hilarious show took us to the brave new world of the teenage brain - and what a weird place it can be. Best of all is that Carey has created Psycho Spaghetti 2. Prepare for a lot of laughs when it comes to a theatre near you.

My TY is looking for submissions from transition-year students. Just write 500 words about anything you like. It can be about something you are doing or planning to do in TY, or an opinion piece on a subject you feel strongly about. E-mail it with your name, school's name and contact telephone number to myty@irish-times.ie