[UN]LOVABLE: The Anti-Valentine’s Show at The Traverse

“In this world, unlovable isn’t something you fear you might be, it’s something you’re told you are. It’s a label, something you’re born with, something inherent.”

For Grace Ava Baker, artistic director of the excellently named Not So Nice! theatre company, February 14th isn’t about roses, chocolates, or the performative coupled bliss clogging our social media feeds. It is a deadline. A line in the sand. When the Edinburgh-based collective takes over the Traverse Theatre next week with [UN]LOVABLE, they aren’t just offering an alternative to the Hallmark holiday; they are interrogating the systems—social, political, and emotional—deciding who gets to be loved in the first place.

It’s a bold pivot for a company that cut its teeth on psychological horror. From the claustrophobic dread of Under the Bed to the chilling The Sculptor, Not So Nice! has never been afraid of the dark. Yet, as they prepare to unleash five new works-in-progress on one of Scotland’s most prestigious stages, it becomes clear the scariest stories aren’t always about monsters. Sometimes, they are about the silence of a phone that never rings, or the crushing weight of a society that has quietly decided you are surplus to requirements.

The Invisible Heart

While the programme features high-concept dystopias and meta-theatrical satire, the most arresting voice may well belong to Emma McCaffrey. Her play, La Solitude, strips away genre trappings to confront a pervasive, often ignored reality: the romantic and social isolation of the neurodivergent community.

“I worked with a charity who encourages socialising and relationships among people with learning disabilities and/or autism,” McCaffrey explains. “As someone with both, I am a close witness to the frustrations of severe loneliness that is very common among adults deemed ‘different’.”

McCaffrey’s work is not merely a portrait of loneliness; it is a critique of the infantilisation enforcing it. She exposes the specific barriers preventing neurodivergent adults from forming the connections others take for granted.

“I wanted to highlight one of the biggest issues as an adult with autism,” she says. “Friendships are few and far between and loving relationships are almost non existent – especially when it’s not taken seriously by carers.”

That final point—the dismissal of romantic agency by caregivers—is a devastating insight giving La Solitude its political teeth. It challenges the audience to consider who we view as valid romantic subjects, and who we relegate to a permanent, sexless childhood.

“I wanted to highlight one of the biggest issues as an adult with autism,” she says. “Friendships are few and far between and loving relationships are almost non existent – especially when it’s not taken seriously by carers.”

Emma McCaffrey

McCaffrey brings significant weight to this discussion, not just as a writer but as a performer with Lung Ha Theatre Company, one of Scotland’s leading companies for actors with learning disabilities.

“Really cool!” she says of the opportunity to bring this perspective to the Traverse. “I perform with Lung Ha Theatre Company and just had my first play in January this year. I’ve had quite good luck as a first-time playwright! Hopefully you’ll see a bit more. If not – catch my work with Lung Ha Theatre Company.”

The Politics of Survival

If McCaffrey explores the social policing of love, Grace Ava Baker explores its state-sanctioned erasure. Her play, Defective, envisions a crime-free utopia achieved through a brutal eugenic bargain: safety purchased by eliminating children deemed a “risk” at birth.

“Being Unlovable and feeling Unlovable are often thought about it as a feeling, something most of us carry at some point,” Baker says. “But while writing Defective, I became interested in what happens when that feeling becomes a fact.”

The play transforms “unlovable” from an emotional state into a bureaucratic designation.

“That took me somewhere unexpected,” Baker admits, “because it forced me to ask where that belief comes from, and whether love, particularly a mother’s love, can exist in spite of something that’s supposedly fixed.”

Baker’s inquiry is sharp and ethically complex. “Defective explores a crime-free world built on an unspoken violence,” she explains. “Safety is achieved by deciding some children are expendable. The play asks whether that kind of peace is ethical, and whether a society without crime is worth the cost of choosing who gets to live.”

Nor is this an isolated experiment for Baker; it represents a broader artistic manifesto. “I’m drawn to stories where emotion collides with ideology, where love isn’t pure or simple, but challenged, conditional, and still stubbornly present,” she says. “It reflects my interest in systems that quietly decide our worth, and in intimate relationships pushed to breaking point by those systems.”

Clowns, Cars, and the Comedy of Despair

While Baker and McCaffrey tackle the structural walls of the heart, Russ Russell and Melissa Ainsworth are busy examining the graffiti we scrawl on them. Their contributions lean into the grotesque and the absurd, finding the blackest kind of humour in our most pathetic moments.

Russell’s Clown Divorce is exactly what it says on the tin: a one-man show about a toxic marriage, mediated through the greasepaint of a circus performer.

“I had the idea for Clown Divorce – or at least, the idea for a one man show about a toxic clown marriage – a few years ago,” Russell says. “I never did anything official with it but I also never forgot about it. When I saw the prompt ‘unloveable’ it felt like the perfect event to get it out of my head and onto a stage.”

The result is a tragicomic dissection of the “ball and chain” narrative, exposing the fragility lurking beneath the misogynistic jokes of the pub bore.

“The play is an exaggerated version of my perspective as a queer person on extremely heteronormative relationships,” Russell notes. “So many people are making big life decisions that they know will make them miserable – whenever I see men joking about marriage being a prison after they decide to propose or even saying that they hate talking to their girlfriends, I think they look like a clown. This clown, specifically.”

He wanted his protagonist to be “deeply unlovable, this horrible pathetic man who can’t stop ruining his own life,” but found the mask allowed him to dig deeper. “Having that as a focus has really helped me delve into how a person becomes like that, to really outline all the steps that lead to rock bottom.”

Crucially, Russell’s approach embodies the Not So Nice! ethos: a refusal to play it safe. “Theatre thrives when we take risks,” Russell insists. “I’d always rather see a weird show than an okay one.”

Equally “weird”—in the best possible sense—is Melissa Ainsworth’s Wish Me Luck, featuring a protagonist whose strategy for winning back an ex involves throwing herself into traffic.

“As a playwright, when I heard ‘Unlovable’, I got very excited; there are so many avenues to go down,” Ainsworth says. “To me, everyone in life has felt unlovable at some point, and that’s what I wanted to explore. However, I didn’t expect to explore grief or what it means to different people.”

For Ainsworth, the extreme premise is a vehicle for empathy, not just shock value. “Beneath the comedic facade is loneliness and trauma,” she notes. “One of the central messages is an exploration of how grief can affect everyone differently. What might sound weird to someone else is another person’s way of coping. We can’t judge people at a first glance.”

By pushing the situation to its absurd limit, Ainsworth invites us to laugh at the darkness. “I also wanted to show how grief can bring people together,” she says. “There is always a light in the darkness.”

When Pain Becomes a Collaborator

Offering a meta-theatrical twist is Ryan Lithgow, whose Tit For Tat is set in the bathroom of a theatre awards ceremony. It follows two writers, fresh from a public breakup, who have weaponised their relationship into competing plays.

“At first, I asked myself what actually makes someone feel unlovable?” Lithgow recalls. “For me personally, I have probs felt the most unlovable after I had been in love with someone and when that love is no longer recuperated… I came to the conclusion that it is in fact love itself that can make us feel unlovable.”

This realisation led him to explore the “danger of confusing catharsis with healing,” and specifically the industry of heartbreak dominating modern media.

“I became interested specifically in how creative people often turn heartbreak into work as a way of surviving it,” Lithgow explains. “As a playwright, I’m fascinated by the idea that writing can be both a form of healing and a weapon. It’s something that can help you process pain, but also something that can keep you trapped inside of it.”

Lithgow touches on a raw cultural nerve here—the “Taylor Swiftification” of heartbreak, where we analyse art to find the real-world scars.

“We see this constantly in pop music, where artists transform heartbreak into songs and albums, and we as consumers buy into that, analysing every word to discover who they are talking about and how love has hurt them,” he says. “I became curious about what that would look like in the world of theatre.”

There is, he admits, a twisted romance in the characters’ mutual destruction. “The central feeling I’m aiming for is that moment of recognition, when you realise these characters aren’t fighting because they hate each other, but because they’re using that hate to fill the void left by the love they once had for one another.”

Lithgow’s work is particularly adept at engaging with a modern, media-literate audience. “I want to keep making work that’s funny, queer, and rooted in pop culture, but that also looks honestly at the emotional cost of our actions,” he says. His strategy is deliberate and structurally precise: “This play reflects my method of using comedy as a way to disarm an audience. Letting them laugh, relax… before slowly asking them to sit with something that carries more emotional weight.”

A Home for the Unloved

It’s fitting these stories of rejection are finding a home at the Traverse. As Scotland’s new writing theatre, the venue has a long history of championing voices that don’t fit the commercial mould. For the Not So Nice! team, the significance of the setting is not lost.

“The Traverse is a space that champions new writing. To see Defective held by this building, these artists, and this audience makes the work feel legitimised,” Baker says, describing the opportunity as a “quiet but significant moment of trust.”

“I want to keep making work that’s funny, queer, and rooted in pop culture, but that also looks honestly at the emotional cost of our actions…”

Ryan Lithgow

For Lithgow, the venue adds a layer of surrealism to his satire. “Because the play is set within the world of theatre, there’s something really almost satirical about it being staged at the Traverse,” he muses. “The Traverse has always championed new writing and new voices, and to have my work sit within that context, on one of Scotland’s most prestigious stages, feels incredibly special.”

Meanwhile, Russell sees it as a “full circle moment,” having coveted the stage since his teenage days in the National Theatre Connections festival. “It’s so exciting to get to be part of an event in such a renowned venue,” he says.

[UN]LOVABLE promises to be more than just cynical counter-programming to Valentine’s Day. It is a collection of inquiries into the human condition, conducted by artists willing to sit with uncomfortable answers. Whether it is the systemic cruelty of a perfect society, the isolation of a neurodivergent mind, or the self-destructive spirals of a broken heart, these plays remind us that being “unlovable” is a universal fear, if not a universal fact.

As Lithgow poignantly concludes, the spectre of lost love is not easily exorcised.

“Losing love doesn’t just hurt in the moment; it’s something that you carry for the rest of your life, whether you are actively thinking about it or not. It reshapes how you see yourself, your worth, and your view on love, and that shift is what can make someone feel unlovable.”

Featured Image: [UN]LOVABLE – Main Poster – Credit Not So Nice!