Letters to Joan
Edinburgh Fringe 2026 at
Pleasance Courtyard, Bunker 3, 11:35am, August 5th-31st,
Produced by Richard Jordan Productions in Association with Pleasance
What if La La Land chose love over ambition? What if The Notebook kept going 50 years later?When a granddaughter uncovers a box of forgotten love letters, she finds herself slipping between a 1956 Brooklyn summer alive with possibility and a present-day American diner steeped in nostalgia. Inspired by hundreds of real letters, Letters to Joan is an intimate new play from debut US playwright Samantha Streit, directed by Scotsman Fringe First Award-winner Jessica Whiley and produced by Tony, Olivier, Emmy and 19-time Scotsman Fringe First award-winning producer Richard Jordan, about the dreams we chase, the ones we abandon, and the unshakeable longing for the life that might have been.A heartwarming and bittersweet story of love, memory and missed chances, Letters to Joan is set to capture every Fringe-goer's heart.
Royal Albert Hall
NOV 2025
Letters to Joan reached a new milestone when I was invited to read one of my grandmother’s original letters at Letters Live at Royal Albert Hall alongside Benedict Cumberbatch, Joe Alwyn, Nish Kumar, Michael Palin, Celia Imrie, and more. It was truly a dream come true.
A granddaughter finds her grandmother’s 1956 love letters, uncovering a lost dream and a story of love, grief, and the choices that shape us. A true story unfolding between a Brooklyn summer and a present-day diner, where past and present blur.
About The SHOW
In 1956 Brooklyn, an aspiring playwright falls in love, her letters brimming with desire and ambition. Decades later, her granddaughter, a writer herself, uncovers them—tracing the arc of a love story cut short and a dream left unfinished. Between a Brooklyn summer alive with possibility and a present-day American diner steeped in nostalgia, past and present blur.
She sits across from the man who once held her grandmother’s heart, wrestling with the choices that shaped two lives. Letters to Joan is a true story that explores the dreams we chase, the ones we abandon, and the unshakable longing for the life that might have been.
The Story Behind the Play
1956
2001
1957
Three years ago, I stumbled upon hundreds of love letters my grandparents wrote when they first met. Both passed away before I was eleven, and though I have memories of them, I never truly knew them. But in reading their words, I felt as if I was meeting them for the first time.That discovery became Letters to Joan, premiering this summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—the largest arts festival in the world.
Bringing Letters to Joan to Life
A Dream Fulfilled
My grandmother, I discovered, once dreamed of being a playwright.
She studied playwriting at Columbia University, in New York City, just a block from where I later found myself writing at The Hungarian Pastry Shop, eating the same cheese danishes, staring at my own pages. But life took her in a different direction, and she never pursued that dream.
Now, it feels like I am not only realizing my dream, but hers as well.