The theatrical celebration of cosmic horror known as The London Lovecraft Festival has returned for its fourth year. The event runs from February 11th to the 12th, 2024 at the Drayton Arms Theatre, London.
The festival will include a staged reading of this year’s winner of the annual Writing Lovecraft competition and will be directed by Lorenzo Peter Mason, who first brought festival founder TL Wiswell’s Mountains of Madness to the stage for the 2016 London Horror Festival.
Highlights include A Night Beneath the Elder Sign, three stories, three storytellers, featuring a fireside reading of The Music of Eric Zann, a shadow puppet show based on the frog-heavy tale The Doom That Came to Sarnath and Sam Enthoven’s “Shivers” brings a spooky spin on fungal fun with The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson.
“I’m really excited about this year’s lineup,” says festival founder TL Wiswell. “I know people would like it to be longer, but I felt having it be compact, and all new shows was a format our audience would support. We’re platforming other weird fiction; we have the new writing comp back, Kai’s back, Shivers is back, and I get to visit the Dreamlands. I mean, of course, I’m shitting frogs at the same time, but it’s what happens when you piss off Bokrug. Next time, don’t mess with random idols; it’s a lesson we should all take to heart.”
The festival closes with Leo Doulton’s Into The Dreamlands, an interactive theatre experience brought to you by the people behind the critically acclaimed (and Neil Patrick Harris-approved) Locksmith’s Dream. The blurb for the event is “You are invited to a demonstration of the alleged powers of a dreamer, to join their ritual and explore the Dreamlands. Together, attendees will control the dreamer’s exploration of that rumoured place of strange cities and peoples.” Sounds fabulous to us.
You can find out more on the Drayton Arms website here: https://www.thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk/ , which includes booking information. STARBURST has had a lot of fun at previous London Lovecraft Festivals, and 2024’s events promise to be fantastic.
