The sound design, however, by Holly Harbottle, goes a way towards this, introducing sounds of breathing throughout the play to intensify moments of both sexuality and of panic. 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. Breathless is a funny, honest and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy of purchasing new fashion, to the addiction and suffocating shame of having way too many clothes. The representation of hoarding as a gradual process which slowly takes over your life, offering both the comforts of habitual behavior as well as a sense of safety, of possessions as security, is quietly and subtly written. I could never find anything, much of it didn’t fit as I’d bought things in the hope I’d slim into them eventually.

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.Sophie is a bisexual woman in her thirties - we rarely see queer women out of their twenties onstage or screen in the present day, with a lot of sapphic representation focussing on historical stories. Breathless is a funny, honest and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy, to the addiction and suffocating shame. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions. Laura Horton, in association with Theatre Royal Plymouth, brings brazen new play Breathless to the Fringe.

This success for TRP demonstrates its new creative ambition which was announced by CEO and Executive Producer James Mackenzie-Blackman in 2022. Then obviously Edinburgh went very well and we won Fringe First, so then there was a lot of interest in taking it further afield, and touring it, and then the theatre decided they would come on board as producers, and so I kind of set up SOHO Theatre and lots of those talks and they very brilliantly said they would produce fully.

Sophie loves the beauty of designer clothing, even when she purchases items that don’t fit her and that she will never wear. We engage and inspire many communities through performing arts and we aim to touch the lives and interests of people from all backgrounds. I’m a PR at heart so I know that I’m never going to just drop a show and then not do audience development. For Sophie, a bisexual woman who is struggling to accept her lifelong attraction to women, the attempt to keep control of her life results in a crisis that sends her back to her family home in Plymouth. And then there is the shame of a suffocatingly huge amount of beautiful unworn clothes crammed into Sophie’s living space.

As she is challenged by Jo to stop pretending, her parents are supportive and the moment when things begin to change comes from an unexpected direction. I had a few panicked moments, but once I got into it, it was lovely to realise these clothes would be worn, would have new life. The large-handed tree surgeon’s anti-climatic fling with her best friend, the angry Naval guy and the avant garde self-professed mime artist who made his own socks are things of the past and so Sophie dares to admit that it is time to accept her bisexuality and date a woman. Following our recent news on Laura and her play Breathless, our Trustee, Sharon and I were lucky enough to see it before its transfer to Edinburgh.I’ve always been careful about creating a little nest egg for myself just in case, I earn a living but it’s not much.