Breathless

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To reveal a tiny snatch about myself, I had the sheer joy of performing with the Contemporary Dance Company, ‘Dancers Anonymous’ up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival back in 1978-1980.

I wanted to show the breadth of how much theatre positively impacts people, but not just through shows through community work and engagement which doesn’t often get much attention. It’s also what inspired my Hidden by Things campaign where we invite people to donate clothing with stories attached. That launched on the 28th of January, and that’s funded which is helpful, so again it’s that mixture of creating projects and trying to find the funding. When a 23-year-old Laura Horton came across a vintage Christian Dior pencil skirt, black and gold with deep pockets it seemed to be the perfect symbol for who she wanted to become, someone thin, stylish and successful, like the women she saw in Vouge or on Sex and the City.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. Madeleine MacMahon is performing in Breathless, a new play by Laura Horton that will be at Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August. Madeline Macmahon is high-pitched with a bird-like twitchiness, playing Sophie as naïve and not a little uptight.

And I think that’s probably right, you know giving people one off opportunities, and then not giving them anything else, and there’s no sustainability in that. It will be great to see what Horton will produce next, maybe a full-length drama with a bigger budget at her disposal.This spring BIPC Devon is focusing on how we can support female entrepreneurs to turn their passion into profit! Based on her own experience, Horton’s beautiful script weaves Sophie’s building obsession and life story with the burgeoning love with Jo, whose wardrobe consists of an old school tie, three pairs of shoes (and one on we assume) and the bare minimum of clothing on one short rail. Selling and clothes swap parties and donating clothes to charity in a slow and steady way has helped to chip away at the problem. Played by Madeleine MacMahon, who gives her a nervous likability, Sophie would seem to have arrived at a joyous time in life.

Ben Lyon-Ross, Head of Artistic Development at TRP, said: “Sharing the work internationally feels appropriate for these pieces of work that represent the craft of theatre making and the skillset that we have here in Plymouth. Working with Pleasance Theatre Trust offers us such a vital opportunity to support artists from the far South West. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.MacMahon is a versatile solo performer and engaging storyteller, voicing many characters from Sophie’s girlfriend Jo, her Dad, shady ex-boyfriend and snotty magazine colleagues with swift physical pen portraits for them all. Opening up to new experiences in her late-thirties, Sophie is exploring long repressed sides of herself. Its commitment to balancing humour and emotion means it's neither the funniest show out there or the most moving.

From This Author - Katie KirkpatrickKatie is a director/producer/critic based between Oxford and London, and the co-founder of Love Song Productions. But it’s still a serious problem that needs addressing; clothing hoarding is holding Sophie back from who she wants to be, taking up the space, as her mother tells her, of all the wonderful things yet to come. Inspired by her own experience of clothes hoarding, this monologue by Laura Horton is a gentle story of accepting and managing mental health issues. They give you a little bit of financial support, but when I sat down and did the budget I realized I had to raise ten thousand pounds on top, to afford to be able to take the show and pay for accommodation for directors and actors. The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond.

Happy Meal, the theatre’s co-production with Roots, has recently been part of the Sydney Festival line-up and then moved on to the Perth Festival in Australia.