Breathless

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The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond.

We do this by creating and presenting a breadth of shows on a range of scales, with our extensive creative engagement programmes, by embracing the vitality of new talent and supporting emerging and established artists, and by collaborating with a range of partners to provide dynamic cultural leadership for the city of Plymouth. As they provided the funding, they were co-producers, and they were really helpful in advising me but I did the work myself. Opening up to new experiences in her late-thirties, Sophie is exploring long-repressed sides of herself. BREATHLESS is a homegrown show that was conceived and developed through our artists development programmes.Breathless is a complex confident text which explores mental ill health with sensitivity as well as diversity in different forms including mental ill health, class and sexuality.

Breathless is a funny, honest and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy to the addiction and suffocating shame. Breathless, by Laura Horton, is a play about hoarding, the way this addiction creeps into people’s lives without them even noticing it and dealing with the sense of loss. The excess stuff tells her she has crossed the threshold from fashion enthusiast to hoarder, much as hoarding itself crossed the threshold into mental illness when it was reclassified by the World Health Organization in 2018.

Madeline Macmahon is high-pitched with a bird-like twitchiness, playing Sophie as naïve and not a little uptight. I’ve worked for many years as a publicist and love amplifying the work of others, but it feels so exciting to be following my own dreams and presenting my own work this year. This is a story about how she comes to terms with the growing recognition that she is a hoarder and her struggle to navigate, not just dating as someone with an uncomfortable amount of things, but exploring her bisexuality for the first time. Aftermath:” An Interview with Piper Theatre’s Daniel McKamey, Pance Pony, James Clements, and Bailey Nassetta. Full-length plays include: Labyrinth Diet, The Space, London 2021, ONCOMM winner; Triptych, Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2021.

Short Plays include: Giddy Tuppy, The Space, ONCOMM winner, 2020; Labyrinth Diet, Arcola Theatre 2019; This I Believe, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Exeter Phoenix, 2019. Horton describes herself as having been “on the knife-edge” of compulsive collecting, in denial for a long time because of media portrayals of the condition are so extreme.This new innovative direction will ensure TRP is fully orientated to meet the needs of artists, audiences, and those who take part, but mostly about creativity. Huge thanks to Laura for sharing this on such an important topic, and although I can't be at the Fringe this year, I definitely hope to catch the show elsewhere in the future. When a secret she’s keeping from those she loves, and even from herself, threatens to unravel it all, she must make a choice. That wasn’t so bad back then, I was just the person who had lots of clothes, the one everyone went to if they were looking for outfits for nights out, or specific fancy dress items. It's been a strong few months for Edinburgh Fringe transfers at Soho Theatre, and Fringe First winner Breathless is no exception.