Autobiography on stage can be a tough thing to pull off - the traps of self indulgence or theatrical therapy sessions tend to loom at every corner. Issue theatre can also be quite a conundrum, as good intentions and social agenda fight it out with descriptiveness. Caroline Horton however takes on both of these challenges in her piece Mess, that arrives to the BAC having opened at Edinburgh Fringe last year - it’s a play about anorexia, based on her own experiences with the eating disorder. Uncharacteristically for the two genres, she’s stepped away from first person narratives and inwardness: the show features a play within a play, as Josephine (played by Horton)  attempts to devise a piece with her two friends.

Mess promises to be stylistically similar to Horton’s previous Fringe success, You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy, that earned her an Olivier nomination - engaging and endearing, silly and serious, mashing up songs and laughs with some quite serious stuff. Ahead of the BAC Caroline takes a moment to talk to us about the long process of devising Mess, working with experts and staging stories instead of issues.

Run-Riot: Let’s start by setting up the context for Mess. Do you think eating disorders are still a taboo subject?

Caroline Horton: In 2005, I went back to my old sixth form to talk at the school’s prize giving and amongst many other things including university, drama school, changing my mind about what I wanted to do etc, I mentioned that I had been seriously ill with anorexia and had started to find my way through that to a place where I was happier and healthier. I was genuinely stunned that simply mentioning it had such an effect – I ended up talking to students, parents and staff for a long time – mainly listening to their experiences of knowing someone with an eating disorder and not knowing what to do. So it was this experience that made me feel – less that eating disorders are taboo – more that they are incredibly difficult to tackle or broach with someone. This is also what made me start thinking about making Mess.

Run-Riot: Your previous piece You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy, was based on your grandmother’s love letters; Mess is even closer to home and based on your own battle with anorexia. What was the experience of opening up this much in a theatrical way like? Would you consider it a risk in any way?

Caroline Horton: I was at the peak of my own struggle with anorexia 10 years ago – I don’t think I could have started work on Mess before I did so, which was in 2010. I’m also lucky to be working with a company who take care of each other – it is a tough show to do but also we all believe in it and find it incredibly fulfilling as a result.

The experience of opening up in a show wasn’t something I had done before and so I didn’t know how it would feel – I learnt how to be ok with it as I went along but haven’t felt damaged in any way by the process. It’s been an amazing feeling to see audiences connect with the piece – and in a small way, to try to do something positive with a very damaging experience.

Run-Riot: In Mess Josephine attempts to put on a play about anorexia; it seems quite interesting that you chose this meta-theatrical, play within a play, structure. Did this choice emerge from addressing autobiographical elements?

Caroline Horton: It emerged because of what happened in the rehearsal room on the first day – there was an immediate sense of “this is hard to talk about” and the theatrical version of that in improvisations became the struggle to put on a play about it. And from my own experiences of being ill, that struggle over ‘how do we deal with this?’ felt very, very true and became the principal characteristic of all my relationships at that time.

Run-Riot: Mess was partially funded by the Wellcome Collection; did you work with experts in developing the piece? How did you reconcile the fact-first nature of science with theatre and your own style?

Caroline Horton: From the first day in a rehearsal room, back in 2010, we had experts – Dr Helen Sharpe and Dr Peter Musiat - from the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital -in the rehearsal room with us. They improvised with us and fed in their knowledge to the making process. From this point we then connected with other experts including Professor Ulrike Schmidt and Susan Ringwood from Beat. It never felt like a struggle of different ‘sides’ in the room – the show was always clearly just me staging a version of my own experience and needed to be – first and foremost – a good play. It was a total privilege to have the experts working so closely with us – they were able to reassure, offer advice and be our ‘ethics’ panel so we didn’t have to be.

Run-Riot: Would you consider Mess to be an ‘issue’ piece? 

Caroline Horton: To me it’s principally just a story but, I hope as well that it suggests that it’s possible to have bolder, more robust conversations about eating disorders. The characters in Mess get things wrong …a lot…. so maybe it’s ok for the rest of us to engage – however imperfectly – with these issues.

Run-Riot: Have you had a chance, or would you want to, perform Mess outside the theatre environment, to a targeted audience?  

Caroline Horton: This is something we will be doing in the upcoming autumn tour of Mess, to schools, universities, mental health festivals as well as to some more studio theatres. I’m really excited about this opportunity and we’ll be delivering workshops alongside the tour too which aim to increase awareness around eating disorders.

Run-Riot: Your next piece, Islands, is focused on tax havens. What prompted this change - from intimate and personal, to bigger scale and political narratives?

Caroline Horton: My interest is still personal – no I’m not a tax exile – but I’m fascinated by people’s efforts to create separate little worlds for themselves that cut off from wider society. It has quite strong links with Mess in that way.

Run-Riot: You made a somewhat less orthodox choice of training at École Philippe Gaulier.  How do you think this specific approach to actor training shaped you as an artist? Do you think it made your practice slightly ‘different’ in the UK context?

Caroline Horton: I think there are loads of us from UK university courses who have done the Paris route. But for me, I knew I wanted to make my own work and I looked at companies I loved and they mostly had emerged from Lecoq or Gaulier – so then I just chose Gaulier on gut instinct – an instinct that as a ‘good girl’ , I’d find his school more challenging because he seemed to revel in a sort of anarchy!

Mess

14 May - 1 June 

BAC

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