Lamp Light Theatre Company are very excited to be producing their first full length production of Have You Took The Bins Out? by Orson Bourne performing at the Drayton Arms Theatre from the 22-25 July. This is Bourne’s debut play and Lamp Light’s greatest challenge so far, but they are so grateful to have such a wonderful team bringing this play to life! Tickets for the performances are available here.
‘Moving into a new home should be a fresh start. But with a newly pregnant girlfriend, insufferable in-laws and an unwelcome next door neighbour, this man’s fresh start comes with bin bags flooding the streets. Will he finally be able to move on from a childhood in care he so desperately wants to remain buried? But one truth begins a dangerous cycle and the dirt is slowly making its way over the threshold.’
We sat down with director, Emma McAllister and writer, Orson Bourne, to discuss their upcoming production.
How did your collaboration shape the journey from personal experience to stage production?
Orson: Having gone through Drama school with Emma, I have a huge level of respect for how she approaches theatre and interprets the wider messages of works. I believe we share a very similar style of storytelling which definitely helps. Being care experienced myself I feel a real ownership and protectiveness over my work here, but collaborating with Emma has helped me view the work with less sentimentality. Being able to view it objectively has been very valuable to the production. For myself in this process, coming in as a writer and then surrendering control “being just a mere actor”, at the start was tricky. But very quickly I found comfort in Emma’s directing and letting her shape what I had written theatrically, her support has allowed me to be vulnerable in both my acting and writing rather than treating them as two separate things.
How did you approach balancing humour with the darker themes around care and identity?
Emma: Reading the play as a director, I’m finding that the characters themselves aren’t funny, but the non-naturalistic style that they’re written in gives the audience space to laugh at them. When you’re delving into a topic that is as emotionally charged as growing up in care and the systems around it, it’s easy to fall into the trap of recreating the negative feelings and atmosphere that can be associated with it. What Orson has done so well is balance both naturalistic and surrealist styles which on the one hand, welcomes the audience into the story by allowing us to laugh and have a good time, but on the other hand, encourages the audience to think and learn something about a topic that isn’t addressed a lot in theatre, film and TV.
It’s also very important to me to highlight that people who grew up in care and work in the care system are never the butt of the joke in this play. The characters that surround Man are the ones that are laughed at and it makes him the person we want to look at most.
Orson: I wrote a very serious tragedy. I’m still a little confused why people find it so funny! Embarrassingly, nobody finds me funnier than I do. I’ve always been a joker. For a long time, it was a coping mechanism, it hurt less if I made the joke first or said it louder. Which at the time I thought was fantastic but all that does is hide pain or divert emotions. I’m really fortunate to have been able to undo this, address what I needed to, and now slowly start to incorporate humour back into how I view the world.
What conversations did you have about representing care experience truthfully and responsibly?
Orson: There aren’t words to quantify the responsibility I feel about truthful representation for care experienced people. We are so much more than “Annie” or a quick origin story at the start of a film to cheaply buy emotion. The intersectionality of foster care is monumental; there isn’t one singular path through this system. I’ve had many sleepless nights, worrying about a line, or a word, or if something needed to be rephrased. I know what it’s like to be misrepresented, so I never wanted to write beyond what I could speak to. My research extends far beyond my own 18 years in care. I’m incredibly grateful to every person that shared their experiences with me and ultimately influenced this story. I hope I’ve done them proud.
Emma: During our time at drama school together, Orson was always very open about his upbringing in the care system. So, in a sense, the conversation has been going on for years. Very early on in this specific process, I was actually quite apprehensive to direct it given that I’m not care experienced. All I had was the insight my friendship with Orson gave me. There has been so much discussion in the industry lately about who has the right to tell what stories, so there was a lot to think about. Ultimately, after conversations about what I’d want to highlight, Orson trusted me with his baby, and that’s not something I take lightly at all. On top of that, as we’ve delved into the script in rehearsal, I’ve noticed that the crux of the play is not its depiction of care leaving experiences, but its challenging of the nuclear family set-up.
What challenges came with developing this as a debut full-length production?
Emma: MONEY! At this early stage in Lamp Light’s career, funding is the one thing that could fix a lot of our problems. Orson had to cut parts of the original script so it could be done in an hour slot. We’re lucky that everyone on the team is super adaptable so it’s a real team effort. Shout-out to our marvellous producer George Bird who has been jumping any and all the hurdles that have come our way, and for being the cornerstone of getting this play on!
Orson: Lines. If I knew when writing this I would be in it myself, it would probably be half the length 🙂