During the UK’s first period of lockdown, our project began to form an archive of written testimonies about how the pandemic has affected people’s experiences of solitude. We put out a public call for such testimonies, to which many people responded. Eventually we posted a selection of these testimonies in three blogs which can be viewed here.
Here we present a film created by the theatre company Idiot Child, based on the testimonies. The words you hear, all spoken by the actor Susie Riddell, give eloquent expression to the widely varying experiences of pandemic solitude.
Anna Harpin (@Spamcan) and Susie Riddell (@SusieRids) are the co-directors of Idiot Child, who are working with our project team and research network whilst developing a new show about loneliness.
Anna is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick, and Susie is an actor and voice artist, trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.