What does love really mean? new play at the Chichester Fringe

The performance will be at 5pm on Saturday, June 15 at One-o-Four, 104 The Hornet, Chichester PO19 7JR – a short play that attempts to define love and how different individuals perceive it. Through each character, we explore a different way of offering and receiving love and discover how relationships, be they familial, romantic or platonic, can shape and affect how we interact with others.

As she says, it’s a play that has been long in the making, a show which looks to delve into the hearts of its audience and connect with their own experiences of all kinds of love.

“This show captures the complexity of the concept of love and its ability to both elate and overjoy whilst simultaneously being able to display the full weight of responsibility and pressure a loving relationship can bring. With a cast of bright new performers this show brings energy and depth and is looking to make waves at Chichester Fringe.”

Rhiannon Ella Tomes is based in Oxfordshire and London, but studied in Chichester, which is where L, O, V, E, Question Mark was developed. Rhiannon is a writer, director, and performer. She has been involved in theatre and the arts from a young age and is inspired by artists and writers such as Sarah Kane, Forced Entertainment and Harold Pinter.

She explains: “I grew up in a religious household in rural Oxfordshire. My parents separated when I was at a young age, and I remember my childhood environment being loving, but fairly strict. I always knew I enjoyed performing, but it wasn't until my late teens that I fully understood the power that theatre could gift to me. I had discovered a space where I could fully express myself, where I could feel and display strong emotions without having to concern myself with how others may react. I had a space to be myself, and it didn't matter what that looked like. I think that is often the case for those who are neurodivergent; we find that theatre provides us with the tools to further process and understand ourselves and offers opportunities to contextualise the world around us, without the pressure to conform.

“My debut play, L, O, V, E, Question Mark, has been in the works for about three years now. Having first started writing the script during my final year at the University of Chichester, I knew at the time that it was something I would want to develop in the future. Like many young people at the time, my first steps into the adult world were harshly marred by the pandemic, which only served to heighten the other ordinary experiences that come with growing up, such as heartbreak, or trying to figure out where you fit in. As a theatre maker, I wanted to create something that could express this frustration and confusion, this feeling of needing to relearn what a core element of life - ‘love’ - actually means in practice. That is what the play is about. Love. How our differing experiences of love affect our future ideas and abilities. How the love shown to you by your parents affects your expectations of romantic love. How heartbreak lingers on, regardless of any other progress you make in new relationships. How we, as humans, feel a desperate need to make people love us, and how that can make relationships turn transactional. We're thinking about whether there is a right

way to love.

“As a writer, I am inspired by playwrights such as Sarah Kane. Kane's Crave was an eye-opener to what a play could be. I felt enlightened and energised by the idea of a narrative that isn’t linear, by characters that seemingly move in and out of interacting with each other. My texts have a directness that is clouded by an abstract structure, reflecting my frustrations at the lack of clarity people around me provide when talking about their feelings. My goal is to make the audience think about their own experiences of love, what it means to them, and to ask them to recognise the ways in which they offer love to others. I want people to see what my thought process looks like and to try it out for themselves.”

This play will be her debut as a writer and director.