INTERVIEW: This Valentine’s Day, send some ‘LoveNotes!’

Photo: Heather Christie is the creator of LoveNotes! Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Fortune Creative with permission.

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Heather Christie is in the business of understanding and being fascinated by love — when it works and when it doesn’t. The author captured real stories about falling in love and breaking one’s heart for a book called LoveNotes!, and the words have now been adapted to a storytelling live event with the same name. This Valentine’s Day weekend — Saturday, Feb. 15, to be exact — the stage adaptation will have three performances at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia at the Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City.

The live shows will find a bunch of storytellers offering real stories about love in all of its incarnations, according to press notes. Christie was motivated to create this love phenomenon after a time of dating disappointment in her life following a divorce. During this difficult time, she was inspired to search out love and try to better understand where it comes from. The result of her journey was LoveNotes!

Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Christie to see what’s on the docket for the Feb. 15 performances. This is not her first storytelling live show; she’s also the creator of Listen to Your Mother NYC, and her literary work has been widely published. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.

What initially prompted you to put pen to paper and create the book LoveNotes!?

The book and the entire LoveNotes! project (the off-Broadway storytelling show, the satellite city shows and the soon-to-be-launched podcast) came to me during the loneliest, saddest and darkest season of my life. It was in the wake of divorce and subsequent dating disappointment that I became indignantly curious about what real love looked like — how did it walk around in the world?

As a writer, my theory was that if I could find proof of real love in other people’s real stories, then that would be the evidence I needed to believe that it was possible for me, too. So, I put out the call for real stories by real people about real love. And voilá — LoveNotes! was born.

Keep in mind, LoveNotes! is different from a straight-up anthology. Think of all the bits and pieces you’d scribble into a composition book — quotes, doodles, puzzles, questions and thoughts, etc. LoveNotes! combines all of this: incredible true love stories with related, interactive journal prompts; puzzles; artwork; and more. I like to believe it’s a new genre (ha, ha!). Something like a fun, interactive smash up Chicken Soup for the Soul and Modern Love with a twist of an activity book.

How does the performance differ from what readers experienced in the book?

The live performance pieces are a bit shorter than the stories found in the book. I’ve found the sweet spot for a spoken word story is about five to six minutes, which translates roughly into 750 words, whereas the book allows for more space and slightly more fleshed out stories of approximately 1,000 words. That said, the experience of witnessing someone telling his or her story, and hearing the emotion in his or her voice, is powerful and unique to the stage, but it’s also fleeting. The book, on the other hand, allows the reader to revisit a story over and over. The written medium also includes interactive components with the puzzles and prompts that can’t translate to the stage. Both are wonderful though! 

What does real love look like?

This is the ultimate question I am attempting to answer. What I’ve discovered is that it’s different from the fairytale of a single, long-term marriage I grew up believing was the only acceptable model of love. Instead, LoveNotes! has taught me that love comes in many incarnations and when you least expect it, and it can last a day or a lifetime. Real love is what connects us and what, if anything, transcends this human form. 

Why is finding love so difficult for us humans?

Love is like magic — it can’t be quantified or contained or easily explained — and it can be difficult to find. The mystery is getting two hearts to match up in the same way and at the same time, but when the elusive spark strikes two people, it’s spectacular. Love is like water in the desert. It’s there, but sometimes you have to search for it. And like water, the key is to let it flow and not grip too tightly to the stories we tell ourselves about what love is supposed to look like. 

How did you gather all these storytellers for the special Feb. 15 performances?

I held both in-person and self-tape auditions. The cast includes professional storytellers, actors, comedians, writers and a few regular people. The only criterion was that the storyteller needed to have a great 750-word true love story and that the tale had to be about romantic love, not a musing about how much you love your mother or your dog. As the curator of the show, my aim is to create an emotional ride for the audience of stories that range from hilarious to heartwarming and from heart-breaking to healing, with the ultimate goal being that everyone, storytellers and theatergoers alike, leave the show feeling hopeful. The LoveNotes! mission is to spread love one story at a time.

Are you hoping for this Valentine’s Day engagement to spark enough interest for a longer run?

Yes, I’d be thrilled for LoveNotes! to grow into a several-week run each February, supported by a growing network of satellite shows in communities across the country (Indianapolis and Chicago have already launched sold-out shows). I’m also hoping that articles like this encourage people to get involved with LoveNotes! both as storytellers, readers, audience members and future producers. Come to a show. Read the book. Listen to the podcast. Find out more at www.LoveNotesWorldwide.com.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

LoveNotes!, created by Heather Christie, will play the Leonard Nimoy Thalia at the Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City on Saturday, Feb. 15. Performances are scheduled for 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Click here for more information and tickets.