Love Letters Straight From Your Heart // Projects

Performance

Love Letters Straight From Your Heart

Let's raise our glasses to long lost loves and current lovers, to mums, to dads and to absent friends. Uninvited Guests stage an event that is somewhere between a wedding reception, a wake and a radio dedication show. We speak of our own and other's loves - deep, passionate, ambivalent and unrequited - and dedicate songs to them.

If you want to join us on this happy occasion, send a dedication to someone you love to info@uninvited-guests.net. Tell us what they mean to you and why you've chosen this piece of music. Your letters of love may become part of the show, romantic gestures or signs of friendship, shared publicly between us. Be our witnesses and we'll be yours.

Supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland. Supported by Luminate, Scotland's creative ageing festival and the Binks Trust. A BAC Scratch and an Arnolfini We Live Here commission. Also commissioned by Leeds Met Studio Theatre. Originally funded by Arts Council England.

***** The Guardian - "You can't help but fall in love with it."

"The most powerful theatrical event I saw." The Financial Times on Love Letters at Latitude

Upcoming Performances

No upcoming performances at the moment, but check back here in the future.

Watch our trailer here.

History

Love Letters Straight From Your Heart was devised at Leeds Met Studio Theatre and Arnolfini, Bristol. A Scratch version of the work was performed at BAC's Burst Festival on 18th & 19th May 2007. Since then the show has toured to National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Arnolfini, Leeds Met Studio Theatre, Alsager Arts Centre and Latitude. We trialled a version of the show for elderly people at the Peel Centre in Islington, in association with the Clod Ensemble's Extravagant Acts for Mature People programme, and the Lyric Hammersmith in January 2009. We presented the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2009.

In May 2010, we took Love Letters Straight From Your Heart to rural North Devon, to the village hall of Berrynarbor and The Burton Art and Gallery Museum, Bideford, before performing at The Arches in Glasgow. The show has since been performed at Corn Exchange Newbury (June 2010), Warwick Arts Centre (November 2010), Tobacco Factory Bristol (January 2011) and Oxford Playhouse as part of their Playhouse Plays Out programme (February 2011). The show was presented at the Unfringed Festival in Limerick in January 2011, where it won the Spirit of the Fringe Award, and Parabola Arts Centre in April 2011.

In February 2012 we presented a sold out run at Southbank Centre, London and in April performed at Trove, as part of Fierce, Birmingham and the Lingfield & Dormandsland Community Centre. In June we performed at Holborn Day Centre and Riverside Day Centre in London as part of Clod Ensemble's Extravagent Acts for Mature People.

In 2014 we toured to various venues in the highlands and islands of Scotland, in partnership with Luminate, Scotland's creative ageing festival. We visited arts centres outside the central belt and engaged older audiences in pre-show workshops, helping them write the personal dedications to loved ones that make up the show.

Audience feedback

I just wanted to send you an e-mail to say that I saw your show on Saturday evening at the NRLA and I thought it was amazing! The best thing I saw there. It really touched me and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I hope I'll get the opportunity to see it or some of your other work again soon.

I loved it, I loved it, I cried, I was seduced, I fell in love again, I drank cava and said I wouldn't. I want to say thank you for that wonderful performance. I think this show is the one to build bridges and mend hearts. Thank you.

Well, thank the lord for Uninvited Guests. They made my trip to Glasgow worth it. What a marvellous, open-hearted, joyful piece of theatre.

Love Letters Straight From Your Heart // Projects

Performance