When Charlie Rhindress was asked to write the script for a new play based on the COVID-19 pandemic, he asked himself, “Does anyone really want to see a play about COVID?”
But as he delved further into the process, he realized something special.
“It’s this collective experience … it’s global, which is so unusual,” said Rhindress. “I think we felt a connection with so many people, and everybody wants to share their experience.”
The play, We’re Still Here: Tales from 2020 and Beyond, is a collaboration between Festival by the Marsh and Live Bait Theatre, and it premieres Wednesday in Sackville, N.B., before traveling to Amherst, N.S., for a performance on Friday, and then Fredericton and Miramichi this weekend.
Rhindress started with 600 pages of transcribed interviews from people across Atlantic Canada detailing their COVID-19 experiences.
He said something he noticed from these interviews was that everyone experienced the pandemic and lockdown differently. For some people, it didn’t have much of an impact on their lives at all, but for others, it had drastic effects.
Rhindress said some of the interviews were turned into scenes, while others were made into monologues.
Each of the six cast members plays multiple roles. Heather MacIntyre, an actress based in Amherst, said one of the experiences she portrays brings her to tears.
She said there’s a scene that recounts a woman’s experience after her brother died during the pandemic and she had to get from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick during a time when self-isolation was mandatory after going from province to province.
“Just acting that out, I feel a sense of responsibility that I want to do right by her and her story. But I also, you know, I feel those emotions in a much more human way than I have in an acting piece before,” said MacIntyre.
But she also gets to play one of the recurring characters, Lex, who sat in a lawn chair at the end of her driveway during lockdown with a glass of wine shouting to her neighbours who would be at the end of theirs.
MacIntyre said during the rehearsal process, she found herself reflecting on the last few years.
The first couple of rehearsals were just spent sharing COVID-19 experiences among cast members, she said.
“It was really great to listen to different perspectives, as well as feeling like my perspective was there on the stage as well,” said MacIntyre. “I had the chance to be seen, but also to see other people.”
Rhindress said the play explores everything from the sad, depressing times to the good parts, like spending a little extra time with family at home.
He said there’s also a scene with three men in their yard joking about all of the new words and phrases that have made their way into everyday vocabularies, like community spread, which Rhindress said the men used to think meant “a butter dish at a corn boil.”
But another scene is based on his cousin’s interview that dives into the hardships of losing a son while having a parent in a long-term care home and not being able to see him because of self-isolation.
“She said people would come to her door and they’d drop off food on the doorstep, and then stand in the yard and look at her and cry, but they couldn’t hug her,” said Rhindress. “It’s heartbreaking to hear some of these stories.”
With files from Information Morning Moncton
This story was originally published in CBC News on March 22, 2023.
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