She’s always been different to other people. But now there’s a pandemic, everyone is becoming more like her. Stuck indoors with just six litres of bleach, sixty toilet rolls and her smartphone for company, she’s becoming increasingly anxious and isolated as she tries to navigate love in the time of coronavirus.
15 minutes for online theatre.
A few weeks into the first lockdown, Anthony Fox from the New Theatre invited me to participate in the FightBack! festival, an online showcase for new writing.
I wrote Pandemic Panic! for the festival, a quick off-the-cuff response to current events. Knowing this would be an online performance, I thought a lot about who this person was, and why she was talking to herself in her living room – something I try to replicate whenever I write monologues now, because I do hate when characters speak aloud their thoughts to move the story along without any apparent rationale. The wonderful Aneta Dina Keder went above and beyond to not only perform but also film this, the character is wonderfully anxious and unusual, it’s a perfect snapshot of it’s time and I’m very proud of what was achieved to get new writing out and get theatre on right at the start of this crisis.
You can still view it online.
