Second Summer of Love by Emmy Happisburgh

Second Summer of Love Inspired by British 90s Rave Scene

19/08/2025 editorial

The national tour calls into the Alma Tavern Theatre this September

What started as a one-woman performance at Edinburgh Fringe in 2022, has turned into a three-hander play, a national tour and a family affair.

Second Summer of Love, written by Emmy Happisburgh, takes us back to the early 90’s rave scene. It’s inspired by real-life events, the people Happisburgh met along the way and all blended into a celebration of rave culture.

Having grown from one performer into a three-hander play, Scott Le Crass has joined up with the company – Contentment Productions – to direct.

Emmy’s real-life daughter Rosa Strudwick, also stars, playing the daughter of Louise.

The play is told through high-energy physical theatre and comedy. Happisburgh promises an uplifting show which has an “authentic soundtrack” of early house music.

Louise is a Surrey mum. Respectable, though at peak mid-life crisis. She wonders how she ended up here having been an ecstasy-taking idealist and part of the original 90’s rave scene.

With her daughter’s anti-drugs homework becoming a trigger, Louise flashes back through the emotional week she’s just had – then even further to the early rave scene she grew up in.

Second Summer of Love delves into coming of age themes as as well as taking a new perspective for conversations around recreational drug use.

Memories she has around Sterns nightclub in Worthing, have wound their way into the play, Emmy says.

“It is not a ‘true story’ but it is inspired by real life events and real people from when I was luckily, and very accidentally, right in the middle of the rave zeitgeist,” she continues.

“It’s not a tale I’ve seen authentically told in theatres; especially not by a mid-life woman. I am grateful to bring the “one love” message of the original rave movement to the stage. I’m excited to play several different characters using the physical skills of Le Coq again and genuinely overjoyed to be in scenes opposite the other two actors.”