LIfeboats (In Development)

★★★★★ “Very much needed now, Gus Gowland’s Lifeboats inspires hope for the queer community... We all deserve our happy ending” - StageyChaos

Lifeboats is a heartwarming musical that explores universal stories of hope, joy and love, through a queer lens.

Throughout history, LGBTQ+ people have found solace, support and security in the stories of others. Lifeboats draws on age-old storytelling and story-sharing traditions to highlight and honour the experiences of LGBTQ+ communities.

For queer people, knowing that there is a history that you fit into, learning that you are not alone in how you are feeling, can be life-saving. Therefore, each song in the show acts as a lifeboat to the audience, giving them something to identify with, to anchor them, and to carry them to safety.

The show is non-narrative and a multitude of seemingly disparate stories cohere into a show that enables the characters and the audience to realise they are not alone: that someone just like them has walked this path before. Through celebrating a range of rich, resilient and vibrant LGBTQ+ lives, Lifeboats shows all of us, regardless of our identities, that there is somewhere we belong.

The show includes some stories we may already know - those of queer people from history such as Oscar Wilde, Ann Lister (Gentleman Jack) and Marsha P Johnson - and places those alongside every day stories of first love, and community, and finding your place in the world.