What is love? For millennia this question has probed the human psyche.
Earlier this year local performance based collective The Good Room (Daniel Evans and Amy Ingram) asked you the general public — via the website wewantyourlove.com — what they thought love was.
The result is ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’, a new production directed by Dan with Amy appearing on stage, that opens next month.
It’s based entirely on the anonymous stories about all kinds of declarations of love that Dan and Amy received. “We’ve explored the domestic and made it epic,” Dan says.“There is no one definition of love and we present the big questions and the often embarrassing answers. What have you done for love? Is yours the greatest love story never told? Who, or what, do/ did you love? Why? Is love science or poetry? What does love look/ smell/ taste like? What is the ultimate love song or lyric? Was there ever a time when love just wasn’t enough?
“It’s a celebration of the ordinary made extraordinary. Private moments move centre stage in a celebration studded with love songs, rose petals, champagne and tissues,” Dan says.‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ throws the spotlight centre stage on some of the greatest love stories and confessions of strangers ever told — some epic, some fleeting — from crushes to conquests, first loves to feverish one night stands, the happily-ever-after to the downright dejected.
Trawling through the submissions the pair received to the question ‘what love is’, and a number standout including:
• ‘You steal the blankets. But I somehow don't mind.’
• ‘I love the gentle scratch of a beard below the belt.’
• ‘I drank about 700 bottles of wine to handle the rejection.’
• ‘I'm in love with both of them, I feel like they both love me back, and I'm pretty sure they love each other.’
• ‘I'd rather spill my coffee on myself, than write about you, because that would burn less.’
• ‘I found him eating a peanut butter sandwich with spam on the top and I knew he was the one.’
• ‘It's funny how we crave love until we hate it.’
• ‘It's been years, but I still think of you and wonder ‘what could have been’.’
• ‘I fell in love with a teacher once in high school. I would Google his license plate, to see what information I would get.’
Daniel Evans and Amy Ingram founded The Good Room in 2008, exploring themes of memory, yearning and embarrassment. Their work to date includes the acclaimed ‘Holy Guacomole’ (2010), ‘Single Admissions’ (2011), ‘Rabbit’ (2012), ‘Where We Begin’ (2012) and ‘I Should Have Drunk More Champagne’ (2013).
