Fuel have today announced a digital international tour of Uninvited Guests’ acclaimed show Love Letters Straight From Your Heart. The new digital version of the show Love Letters at Home will be performed live via Zoom to an audience of up to 90 (45 pairs) each night and will ‘visit’ 14 venues throughout the UK and beyond.
Love Letters at Home is a joyful, open-hearted show that will help people feel connected at a time when many are isolated and missing their loved ones. First performed by Uninvited Guests in 2007, the original show was a critical hit and played to audiences at over 30 venues including Southbank Centre, RSC Stratford, Fierce Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe.
The digital version of the show will tour internationally to La Teatreria Mexico City, BAM New York, CAP UCLA, ASU Gammage Arizona and Arts Centre Melbourne. Across the UK and Ireland virtual partners will include Brighton Festival, The Holbeck Leeds, Contact Manchester, Eden Court Inverness, Bristol Old Vic, Theatr Clwyd Wales, ARC Stockton, Alphabetti Newcastle and Abbey Theatre Dublin. Each venue will promote the show to local audiences as part of their own programme of work. After the performance people will be asked to donate what they can towards the price of their ticket. Love Letters at Home will premiere at Brighton Festival at Home on 20 May 2020. See below for full details of the tour.
Directed by Paul Clarke and devised by performers Jess Hoffmann and Richard Dufty, Love Letters at Home is somewhere between a wedding reception and a radio dedication show. Before the performance, audience members are invited to send in music requests, dedications and declarations of love to those they care about past and present. These words are incorporated into each performance; dedications are spoken, toasts are made, speeches are given, songs are sung and dances danced. Every performance of Love Letters at Home is unique and collaboratively authored with its audience, who temporarily become a close community for the duration of the event.
Kate McGrath, Director of Fuel said ‘A few weeks ago, we had an idea: could we bring Love Letters online? We found that this beautiful, moving show, which has always had the power to bring people together, translates brilliantly into a digital platform. Because the audience is at the heart of the production, the shared participatory experience comes close to recreating the feeling of a night out at a physical venue. It’s exciting that people all over the world will now be able enjoy this and I hope that it will go some way towards bringing people closer together.’
Love Letters at Home has been commissioned by First Art, a Creative People and Places project, as part of its Go the Distance remote festival for audiences in Ashfield, Mansfield, Bolsover and North East Derbyshire.
Love Letters at Home will run from 20 May – 26 June 2020. Tickets will be allocated on a first come, first served basis http://fueltheatre.com/projects/love-letters-at-home/.
Earlier today it was also announced that Fuel’s acclaimed Barber Shop Chronicles, a co-production with the National Theatre and Leeds Playhouse, will be screened as part of the National Theatre at Home series on 14 May.
