Interview: Karin McCracken, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’

Ahead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, we’re chatting with a range of creatives who will be heading to the city over August to find out more about their shows. Today we’re chatting with Karin McCracken about Heartbreak Hotel.

Can you tell us a bit about you and your career so far.

Eleanor and I started working together in 2017; Eleanor studied directing at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, while I was finishing a theatre degree in Wellington. We had a meeting and haven’t left each other alone since. We both write, Eleanor directs, and I perform. Our first show together was Jane Doe, which we took to Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017. SInce then we’ve made a number of shows together, including Yes Yes Yes, a work for young people that has been licensed to theatres in Wales, Spain, Hungary and Brazil.

With all our shows, we’re interested in having conversations that seem useful when we’re making. With Yes Yes Yes, we wanted to discuss sexual consent, especially the stuff we felt we’d missed out on when we were in high-school; our large-scale show Gravity & Grace looks at artistic failure (something that was particularly on our minds during the pandemic), and with Heartbreak Hotel, we wanted to talk about the physical and mental impacts of a broken heart, and what (if anything) could be done about it.

What is your show about?

Heartbreak Hotel is an investigation into what happens to our bodies when we're grieving. There's three main strands to this deep dive; there's the science, which Karin delivers direct to the audience, and then there's the backstory, which are the scenes that explain how this woman ended up so heartbroken - played in tandem with Simon Leary - and then there's the synth. Karin has learned the synth for the show, and is doing her best* to rip out some covers of classic break up hits (she read that mastery of a new skill is good for a broken heart).

*she is still not good at the synth. Which is kind of the point.

What was the inspiration for Heartbreak Hotel and what’s the development process been to get to this stage?

I (Karin) was at a time in my life where I’d been out of a significant relationship for a long time, but just couldn’t shake it. So, we were thinking about unresolved break-ups, and how there's a very methodical approach to heartbreak in lots of popular culture, but knew from experience that the real thing was harder to pin down, so we started doing some research. Once I realised how interesting the science on heartbreak was, I knew we could weave together a story from personal experience that was funny and moving and, ideally, helpful. 

What made you want to take Heartbreak Hotel to the Fringe?

Bringing a show to Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 was one of the best things we ever did: so we knew we should come back. For me (Karin) as an artist, it was totally formative - when you live in New Zealand, the opportunity to see so much international work is exceedingly rare. Even just being around that number of artists at once was kind of monumental. The whole thing was artistically inspiring and a huge workout for those performance muscles. It’s the best professional development, the best place to fill your tank artistically, the best audiences to improve as a performer. And when we were making Heartbreak Hotel, we had a sense that it could be a good fit for Fringe; the right scale, new writing, funny but not lightweight, direct audience relationship. 

Apart from seeing Heartbreak Hotel, what’s your top tip for anybody heading for Edinburgh this summer?

Decent raincoat, sturdy shoes, loiter in the Summerhall courtyard and listen out for the shows people don’t stop talking about. And while you’re in the courtyard, come find the unusually large New Zealand cohort and say hello. We’ve got four companies from Aotearoa presenting work at Summerhall this year; Binge Culture’s Werewolf (Former Womens Locker Room, 18:15), Trick of the Light’s Suitcase Show (Old Lab, 14:40), and Java Dance’s Anatomy for Accountants (Anatomy Lecture Theatre, 16:30). I’d recommend them all. 

Why should people book Heartbreak Hotel?

I'm trying to be as impartial as I can here, but I'd say you should book Heartbreak Hotel because it's a very generous piece of work, while also being very sharp. Each time we do it I'm genuinely surprised (and relieved?) at how much people laugh and connect with it personally. It's structurally and formally a bit weird, but not alienating, which I love to see in other work.

When and where can people see the show? 

Heartbreak Hotel is at Summerhall (Old Lab), 1-26 August (not 19), 16:10 (75 mins), £10 Previews, £17/£14.50