Laura Horton’s award-winning play Breathless heading to Soho Theatre

Laura Horton’s award-winning play Breathless is heading to Soho Theatre on the back of its successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe and explores the dichotomous experience of hoarding as suffocating and sating.

Based on the writer’s own experience of clothes hoarding, through the characterisation of Sophie, the play begs the question of what happens when the things we covet hide us from ourselves?

Head of Artist development, Ben Lyon-Ross said: “Laura’s writing is tender, funny, and quietly powerful.”

As a companion piece to Breathless, Laura is launching a new podcast Hidden By Things as part of a wider campaign to raise awareness of hoarding behaviours by shedding light on people’s personal stories and removing the stigma that is associated with them.

In an article for Vogue, she wrote: “Ultimately, I realised I wasn’t just someone with a love of clothes; I was someone for whom things were causing distress and distraction. That’s the key difference between collecting and hoarding, I think. I couldn’t move simply between things in my home, struggled to find things, and regularly found myself feeling short of breath and anxious about what I was going home to.

“I’m hoping that by dramatising and highlighting different forms of hoarding, I might be able to help other people – and that thought gives me a bigger endorphin rush than any sample sale purchase ever could.”

Laura is also inviting people to donate an item of clothing with a story attached.

A label linking to the campaign will then be sewn into it before it’s donated to charity.

Website: Breathless Laura Horton – Soho Theatre

Picture: Madeleine Macmahon in Breathless, by Laura Horton Picture: Dom Moore