Production History
More than a decade of love stories, unexpected stages, and moving audiences
The I Love You Plays is an evolving series of site-specific, community-created theatrical experiences that celebrate the people, neighborhoods, and everyday places that make a city feel like home. Created by theater artist Katie Harroff, the project blends oral history, immersive performance, and community storytelling to transform familiar streets, businesses, parks, and public spaces into stages where local stories come to life.
Since its debut in 2013, the series has continually reinvented itself, exploring new communities, artistic forms, and ways of connecting audiences to the places they call home.
2013: The Beginning
The first San Diego, I Love You premiered in the Hillcrest neighborhood as an experimental site-specific walking play produced by Circle Circle dot dot.
Inspired by the cafés, bookstores, bars, and businesses that become the backdrop of our lives, audiences traveled together through five real locations while following a love story inspired by the real experiences of friends and neighbors.
What began as a creative experiment quickly became an audience favorite, earning critical acclaim and award nominations while establishing the project's signature blend of immersive theater and community storytelling.
2014: Love Across Time
The second production moved to University Heights and explored the lives of military families in one of America's largest military communities.
Spanning four decades, the story followed a Navy officer and their lifelong love through changing times, proving the format could adapt to entirely new communities and perspectives.
2015: New Voices
TA residency with La Jolla Playhouse brought the project to the UC San Diego campus, where the production centered on two graduate students discovering both their identities and each other.
This production incorporated dance into the storytelling for the first time, expanding the artistic language of the series.
The same year also inspired LGBTQ+ on Campus, created with San Diego State University's LGBTQIA+ Student Alliance, featuring ten real stories performed throughout campus in a walking theatrical experience.
2016: Audience Choice
San Diego, I Love You (I Love You Not) transformed Ocean Beach into the setting for the project's first interactive "choose your own adventure."
Audience members followed opposite perspectives of the same relationship before voting whether the couple should reunite, making each performance part theater and part community conversation.
2017: Music Joins the Journey
With San Diego, I Love You: The Musical, the series expanded into Liberty Station, combining live musicians, singers, and immersive storytelling into a celebration of love, travel, and place.
Another residency at the University of San Diego produced The Dorm Stories, a performance created from students' real experiences living on campus and staged inside an actual residence hall.
2018: Modern Romance
San Diego, I Love You: Swipe Right explored online dating and modern relationships through stories inspired by dating apps and digital connection, staged throughout the North Park neighborhood around Thorne Street Brewery.
2019-2021: Reinvention During the Pandemic
When live performance paused, the spirit of The I Love You Plays found new forms.
Projects during this period included:
The Corona Diaries, an online storytelling series where artists shared personal experiences of life during the pandemic.
The Living Room Play Workshop, developed through The Old Globe, teaching community members to create original plays inspired by their own homes.
On This Spot: It Happened Here, an innovative walking experience commissioned by The Old Globe that combined QR technology, filmed performances, and site-specific storytelling throughout Balboa Park. Visitors explored real locations while unlocking intimate stories connected to the spaces around them, demonstrating how immersive storytelling could thrive even during social distancing.
2022: A Pause
Following career transitions and a cross-country move, the project entered a brief period of reflection while new ideas began to take shape.
2023-2024: Expanding Beyond San Diego
While serving as Artist-in-Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, Katie launched DC Amplified, a broader initiative centered on community storytelling.
Its first major project, DC & Me, gathered stories from residents through interviews and workshops before transforming them into interactive public art installations across three DC Public Library branches. The installations featured sculpture, film, and audience participation through QR codes and an interactive storytelling hotline, expanding the project's reach beyond traditional theater.
2024-2025: A New City Says "I Love You"
The series officially expanded beyond San Diego with the premiere of two new productions:
DC, I Love You: First Dates
DC, I Love You: Ready or Not
Presented in Mount Pleasant and Capitol Hill, the productions sold out and demonstrated that the model could successfully translate to entirely new cities while remaining rooted in local stories and neighborhoods.
During this period, City Heights, I Love You also returned the project to San Diego, celebrating one of the city's most vibrant and culturally diverse communities.
Today: A Growing National Project
What began as a neighborhood experiment has grown into a nationally expanding model for community-engaged performance.
Each I Love You production is developed in partnership with local residents, artists, organizations, and businesses, ensuring that every city tells its own story in its own voice.
Current development includes new partnerships and future productions that continue to explore one simple question:
What does it mean to love a place enough to tell its stories?
