A PREOCCUPATION WITH ROMANTIC LOVE Comes to Camden Fringe in August

Poet and comedian Laura Thurlow is staging her new solo show A Preoccupation with Romantic Love at the Camden Fringe this August prior to a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that same month. Laura is a writer and performer, originally from the Great Lakes Region of Canada, with experience performing across Europe. Her recent credits include being a finalist at the European Slam Final held by Commonword (Manchester), and at the Glasgow Women’s Library’s ‘Calm Slam’. She has recently been a featured performer in Edinburgh with both The Loud Poets and Spit It Out! 

The show takes its title from a lecturer’s ten-year-old criticism of Laura’s writing portfolio – that it displayed ‘an unnecessary preoccupation with romantic love.’ In writing this show, she hopes to get it out of her system and shortly move on to writing on more serious matters and perhaps, having rid herself of her terrible desire to be loved, develop a lucrative career as an estate agent. 

‘Preoccupation’ is an hour-long show in six micro-acts – Laura addresses six ‘ghosts’ (her six exes) through the medium of the voicemails they left her to end things. The performance combines traditional stand-up elements with a theatrical staging and portions of poetic verse. In a timeline spanning ten years, she lays plain her romantic disappointments and makes light of the easier sorrows – the European aristocrat who left her behind to pursue a life as a mountaineer in the Yukon, the gregarious Medieval re-enactor who liked everything about her (except most of what she had to say), the three-month love bomber who vanished without a trace. Then there are the harder sorrows – the high school best friend who cut things off abruptly, the married guy who strung her along, the one whose anger did its best to whittle her into nothing – and quite nearly succeeded. 

The show is laugh-out-loud funny and cry-a-little sad, and anyone who has dated men will recognize themself in these stories. It is the show’s specificity that lends it its universality and familiar tone. Laura herself is a gifted comedic voice and storyteller who knows how to put on a show. Come and see ‘Preoccupation’ at Camden Fringe 2023 - and bring your broken heart along with you. 

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