Have You Took The Bins Out? Interview

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.

Lamp Light Theatre Company are very excited to be producing their first full length production, as well as Orson Bourne’s writing debut which he describes as “an exploration of identity, care experience, and the complicated process of owning your story.” This is Lamp Light’s biggest project and greatest challenge to date and they are thrilled to be working with such an incredible cast and team to bring Have You Took The Bins Out? To life.

We sat down with playwright Orson Bourne and director Emma McAllister to learn more. 

What can you tell me about Have You Took The Bins Out and the inspiration out?

Orson: “Whatever happens, it’ll make a good book.” Is my personal mantra. I remember being 5, hugging my knees under a blanket late at night imagining the opening line or who to dedicate the book to. While this play isn’t the book of my life, it is dedicated as a reminder to that little boy. And all the other kids who despite all the hardships faced, and yet to face, once through it, to tell their tale.

Have You Took The Bins Out? Is a lesson in how we learn from life. The importance of storytelling, sharing our experiences and owning narratives. The beauty is that it isn’t an hour and a half of trauma dumping but it’s an hour and a half of exploring the weight our stories have on us, and the consequences of trying to be someone you’re not.

The unwelcome neighbour and bin bags flooding the streets provide a brilliant, gritty visual. What drew you to use the physical clutter and chaos of a neighbourhood as a metaphor for buried childhood trauma?

Orson: I come from a place of shoes tied together and thrown over telephone wires, dumped furniture on estate commons repurposed as playgrounds and friendship wars over lost games of Kerby. You write what you know, and as a boy who grew up on estates across the midlands, that chaos is all I know, it is the manifestation of my childhood.

Specifically, the idea of bin bags, this motif of foster children being uprooted with their lives carried in bin bags. I saw parades of children entering/leaving homes, myself included, all having to carry their belongings in black bin bags. It’s such a dehumanising and theatrical image that when creating my play, it just very naturally became the nucleus.

You’ve described the play as an exploration of owning your story. For a protagonist who desperately wants his past in care to remain buried, what is it that finally forces him to confront it?

Orson: The idea of everything just being a sequence of events, is kind of what a play is, a sequence of plot points that create a narrative. The foster care system, from my experience, is very mechanical. So as the protagonist is going through his life, the cycles are becoming more and more apparent, and it isn’t until this idea of the cycle taking over that he has to confront it. It’s a feeling I think everybody feels, care experienced or not, how much control do we have over our lives, and to what extent do we go to get control?

Writing about the care experience is deeply important and often underrepresented in contemporary theatre. What did you feel was most vital to get right when portraying a care-experienced protagonist?

Orson: For myself it’s care experienced people getting to tell their story. I don’t want to sit through another little orphan Annie scenario. I want foster care to be a topic we do explore in theatre, not as a narrative device or a tool for a quick backstory, but something we can discuss and confront. Foster care and its effects do not end when you cease being a kid. We have so little that respectfully explores this world. There is not just one path through care. I hope that is something I have accomplished here,
that we are presenting a story that touches a lot of people’s experiences and then enables them to share their stories.

The tension between a newly pregnant girlfriend and insufferable in-law introduces a lot of classic domestic friction. How do you balance the dark, thriller-like elements of the play with these relatable, everyday family dynamics?

Orson: For me, as a gay man who spent his how childhood in the system, the “thriller” aspects are the classic domestic friction elements of the play. Especially for our protagonist, there’s this fantastic dissonance where the thing he so desperately is yearning for is his worst nightmare. Balance is such an interesting term because there are times when I could easily push the play further in one direction but then I feel it wouldn’t be warranted for what we are trying to do. I’d describe my writing as a tickle and a slap, I’ve got to get you laughing to get you crying.

As your writing debut, how does it feel to see Have You Took The Bins Out? transition from the page to a full-length production? Has anything about the characters evolved in ways you didn’t expect once the actors got hold of them?

Orson: Emotional. I’m quite a sensitive soul, despite the mardy face. So, seeing characters come to life that I’ve had in my head for nearly a decade now is quite comforting.

Witnessing such a dedicated chorus of actors bring these characters to life, I’m in awe at the humanity and hope they are injecting into them.

This is Lamp Light Theatre Company’s first full-length production, making it a massive milestone. What was it about Orson’s script that made you say, this is the one we have to do?

Emma: From knowing Orson and watching the very early developments of this play, I knew it was going to be a very important piece of writing. To be honest, I was very apprehensive to do it! For a directorial debut, it isn’t a play I want to get wrong. On the other hand, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill new play. It has such a unique voice and style that you don’t come across very often when you’re on the lookout for new plays, and that was too exciting not to do now!

The play deals with psychological weight but is set against a very grounded, domestic backdrop. How are you approaching the visual style and pacing to build that sense of a dangerous cycle?

Emma: Orson has very clearly written two worlds into this play. There’s the real world and the world inside Man’s head, and each world has its own unique style. It's a director’s dream! I want to make it really clear for the audience to see these two versions of reality, and we do that by marrying exaggerated, larger than life characterisation alongside true-to-life naturalism. The constant swapping between styles makes time go really fast! You don’t have time to check your watch because you’re always on the lookout for what's going to happen next. That definitely keeps the pace up!

With a cast navigating heavy themes like childhood trauma alongside high-stress comedic/domestic tension (like the in-laws), how have you approached the rehearsal room environment to support the actors?

Emma: I like to think I lead the room and the work with fun and let the important questions come from there. Even though the play covers a topic that needs to be taken seriously, it is at its core a very funny and silly play. I choose to let the silly lead. There are highly stylised moments in this production which require more focus and less giggling time, but otherwise the rehearsal room is a very free space. It’s usually during the down time we have when the cast are blowing off steam, that they’ll say or do something completely brilliant or silly. I’m often heard saying “You’ve got to be careful what you do around me because whatever you’re doing, I’ll put it in the play!” The “serious” conversation of what we’re trying to say with a scene or sequence filters in through the fun and spontaneity.

How are you utilising sound and set design to bring the claustrophobia of the new home and the literal/metaphorical threat of the streets into the theatre space?
Emma: The script really enforces a claustrophobic atmosphere for Man and his partner by surrounding them with big personalities. I’ve given each of the worlds their own separate zones on the stage and the boundaries of those zones are blurred and broken as the play unfolds. At the start of the play, we learn that the characters are living through a prolonged bin strike, so let's just say that the outside world has definitely made its way inside by the start of the play! In terms of sound, a lot of the play is underscored by the cacophony of characters who haunt Man through the play.

The title Have You Took The Bins Out? is such a mundane, everyday question, yet it clearly carries massive weight in this play. At what point in the creative process did that title click for both of you?
Emma: Obviously, I didn’t come up with the title, but I think it perfectly sums up Man’s inner turmoil over the secret he’s hiding from his family. Will he reveal the truth? During one of the early read-throughs, I remember having a moment of “oh that's what it means!” It’s a perfect title for this play.

Orson: Some of the working titles I had for this play, in reflection, are so embarrassing. Because they were trying too hard. Emma is Irish, myself I’m a midlands boy, Ellie is scouse, we all have our own distinct dialects. We speak in a way that is true to ourselves, language is important. The actress who plays Zsazsa, very true to character actually, when she heard the title of the play said, “You are aware it’s taken and not took?”. For me it was in that moment I knew the title was right.

What has been the most rewarding—or perhaps the most challenging—aspect of collaborating on a brand-new debut script?
Emma: Early on, we had to have lots of discussions about condensing the play so we could do it with the resources that were available to us at Lamp Light. At the moment, Orson has been based in Leicester while the rest of the team are in London, so not having him in the room for a while has been tough. When I think of what's been rewarding, I think of the conversations that doing this project has encouraged us or required us to have. I’ve learnt so much about a part of society that I didn’t have much knowledge of before, and it's a real privilege to learn about Orson’s perspective on things that someone who didn’t grow up in care wouldn’t think twice about.

Orson: My lack of knowledge around Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. Apologies gang.

What do you hope audiences are discussing in the bar or on the way home after the curtain falls?
Emma: I want more than anything for the audience to have been entertained! I hope they have a really fun night at the theatre. I hope people recognise themselves or people they know in the plethora of characters that they meet in the play and laugh with each other about it. I would love for that enjoyment and laughter to trigger a moment of realisation and recognition of a perspective they probably haven’t seen a lot of in mainstream entertainment. This play isn’t about the care system, but about someone navigating a “normal” life in the shadow of it. I hope this play encourages people to shine a torch into that shadow.

Orson: I hope they get to understand why our protagonist does what he does and they in turn, I don’t want to say learn from but recognise his mistakes. There comes a time when we need to start owning our past and growing from it, and not doing what the characters in our world do. Because I think they all share a tragic flaw.

Have You Took The Bins Out? runs at The Drayton Arms Theatre from Wednesday 22nd until Saturday 25th July 2026. For tickets and more information visit https://www.thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk/have-you-took-the-bins-out