Love-You-Gram actors bring romance back to town

With a crimson rose in one hand and construction paper-matted poetry in the other, actor Gabe Gloden, managing director of the Bloomington Playwrights Project, entered the Wright Place Food Court at 5:45 p.m. Friday.

Tuxedo-clad, Gloden weaved through tables of dining students until he reached his target, cleared his throat and began to recite, “I have this feeling inside me ...”

Love-You-Grams, a fundraiser of the playwrights project, featured live poetry performances by trained actors and actresses sent from one friend or lover to another, and deliveries startled many recipients all over Bloomington Feb. 13 and 14.

Senior Bryson Bosson said he was shocked but happy upon receiving a Love-You-Gram.

“I was completely surprised,” Bosson said. “Before it happened, I had actually commented on someone walking through the food court all dressed up. I thought, ‘Wow, he must be doing something for Valentine’s Day.’”

Sophomore Amanda Stahl, partially responsible for Bosson’s Love-You-Gram, sat next to him as Gloden performed.

“It was the funniest thing I had ever seen,” she said. “I was crying.”

Bosson said his friends lured him to the food court with promises of ice cream, but what he received in front of a snickering audience was, he said, much more memorable.

Through two days of Love-You-Gram deliveries, the performers visited personal residences, classrooms, the Herman B Wells Library, the McCulla School fine arts studio and a Hobby Lobby.

“I was embarrassed and excited,” Hobby Lobby employee Tiffany Ward said after receiving a Love-You-Gram from her husband Bryon. “I’ll be sure to send him one at work next year.”

Ward stood laughing by a cash register as Playwrights Project actor and junior Ian McCabe recited William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18.”

“It was my third Love-You-Gram, so I wasn’t nervous,” McCabe said. “(Saturday) morning, I delivered to a 94-year-old Argentine woman on Wiley Street. It was so fun and exhilarating.”

The playwrights project raised more than $200 for the organization with plenty of chaotic, last-minute orders, said Carmen Blubaugh, development assistant of the playwrights project and IU graduate student.

“We continued to receive requests throughout Valentine’s Day,” she said. “It was frenzied, but everything worked out nicely.”