We’ve always used food and the ritual of eating communally in our shows. It’s a way to engage the audience in an interactive and personal way.

The audience should expect to be entertained but also challenged and delighted. Eat Your Heart Out sits somewhere between cabaret horror and dark comedy.

When they arrive at the doors, the audience will be led in to the space by the Aide, who is like a disheveled maitre d’. In the dining space there will be one long table, with stages at either end. There will be a trio of musicians playing baroque music and the three cooks will be singing along. It will all be lit with candles and will look quite beautiful, if a little dank.

The original research and development was done in a modern warehouse in Birmingham but the style was very baroque. The feedback was that the contrast of the two made it seem quite post-apocalyptic. So that’s become the premise.

In creating the show, each of us researched different foods. For instance I, the Aide, am a sort of rat woman, so I went off to research offal. One of the cooks researched pheasants, another spiced fruit, and then we came together and found this myth called The Wendigo, which is the basis of Hansel and Gretel and Baba Yaga. That led us on to the world of cannibalism.

The food is intrinsic to the show. The first course will be presented as artifacts of our history. So there will be a little pot of ash (including popping candy) to represent the asteroid that hit them. The second is a perfume bottle that represents a distillation of all the precious things from the palace. Then the third part of the starter is a piece of edible cloth that smells of the Queen.

The last course is served in a coffin, which is brought out by the cooks. It’s chocolate ganache cake with edible flowers planted in it, that will be troweled out into people’s hands like soil. We will give people water, but not wine. The food is what is important. There purposefully isn’t an option for vegetarians.

It’s a bit like a honey trap; they’re trying to do the best that they can. But if you’re having a banquet after an apocalypse, when there’s nothing left, what are you suggesting? Without wanting to be overtly political, it does raise a question about consumerism and the greed of the masses.

I’m working as a producer, performer and associate artist of Kindle Theatre. We open on the 26th of February, so we’ve got about three weeks of madness to go. This week my brother is making us some chandeliers out of metal, someone else is making us the coffin for the pudding and this weekend I’m going up to Birmingham to rehearse the show.

We’re having to juggle marketing, production and getting ready to perform. There’s also a lot of running around the country picking up costumes and props.

What’s so nice about Coming Up is that we’ve got this whole team to support us. I mean, we’ve done shows where we’ve had to rig up our own lighting, so it’s amazing to have so much help this time.

The whole thing will last 80 to 90 minutes and costs £15. It will never be that cheap again.

Nina was talking to Nell Frizzell.

Eat Your Heart Out will be on 26 and 27 February at 8pm. Tickets cost £15 and are available here. Suitable for 18yrs+. Eat Your Heart Out is produced in collaboration with Courvoisier. Images by Steven Davies.