Hello! We are Love Song Productions, a theatre company of young queer creatives taking our show Seconds to Midnight to Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Pleasance Courtyard) and to Bitesize Festival at Riverside Studios this summer!
What is Seconds to Midnight?
Seconds to Midnight is a new piece of theatre from Love Song Productions exploring queer friendship, the nuclear clock, and the inevitability of endings. Diving into the parallels between knowing the world is about to come to an end, and the inevitable death of a friendship, the show combines past and present stories with recorded audio from members of the public and audience, putting real-life friendships and real-life anxieties centre stage.
Best friends and housemates Jo and Eddie met as teenagers in a game of 7 Minutes in Heaven. Years later, the end of the world is approaching and a different kind of countdown forces them to put their friendship into perspective. Over the course of a series of chats, gossip sessions, arguments, and confessions, the pair grapple with the realities of a relationship with no future and thus no consequences. With the title playing on both late night chats and the nuclear clock, the show will use creative audience involvement to get people to think about their own close friendships, all the while unpacking one central question: what would you want to say to your best friend if the world was ending tomorrow?
Who are we?
Seconds to Midnight has been created collaboratively by us as a company. It's being directed and produced by Katie Kirkpatrick and Mati Piovella, with Jessica Tabraham as lead writer. Our cast members Elise Busset and Cosimo Asvisio have also been involved in every stage of the devising process. We are all final year students at Oxford University, hoping to forge careers in theatre after we graduate. The Fringe offers us an invaluable opportunity to start making these connections.
Last year Love Song produced Sing, River, a new queer folk musical which ran at Pleasance Courtyard for the full festival - we're really excited to build on last year's success and make our 2024 run even bigger and better.
What is Love Song?
Love Song Productions put innovative storytelling and character-driven writing at the heart of what we do. Specialising in new writing, character-driven stories, and LGBT narratives, we love creating theatre that questions the nature of everyday life in the twenty-first century. We have a particular interest in shows that incorporate music in new and innovative ways, and in producing contemporary British plays that have been somewhat forgotten and putting a new twist on them through lighting and sound.
Co-founders James Newbery and Katie Kirkpatrick met when they were put on the same floor in their first year of university, and wrote a play about their housemates (...which went down about as well as you’d expect). Since then, Love Song has put on five shows in Oxford, and one Fringe run:
- 2nd May 1997 by Jack Thorne, BT Studio
- Wednesday, Death Meditation by Shaw Worth, BT Studio (New writing double bill)
- She Felt Fear by Kirsty Miles, BT Studio (New writing double bill)
- Scenes with Girls by Miriam Battye, Old Fire Station
- A Girl In School Uniform (Walks Into a Bar) by Lulu Raczka, BT Studio
- Sing, River by Nathaniel Jones, Hope Theatre, Islington & Pleasance Courtyard
Why are we asking for your help?
As you likely know, Edinburgh Fringe is very expensive! We’re really excited to have secured our venue at Pleasance, which is a great opportunity for us to get our show seen and start making industry connections that will help us forge the careers in theatre we want to achieve. But affording to live in Edinburgh for the month, and being able to access things like PR and wider print campaigns will be very difficult for us without your help.
Your money will go towards covering our accommodation costs, as well as helping us get our show out there via marketing and PR so we can reach as wide an audience as possible.
We really believe in this show and in bringing experimental, exciting queer theatre to a wider audience - we just need a little extra help to be able to do it.
You can find us @lovesongprods on all socials!
Thank you so much - every bit of help makes a huge difference to us!