How did I get to this amazing place?

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

I was sitting by the altar in St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh last night, looking around me and thinking

O my god this place is so beautiful.

We were rehearsing the Covid Requiem.

I’d been expecting to feel overawed by the size of the place and find it frightening to speak.

But I felt so utterly at home, for some reason: and the miraculous acoustic seemed to help me, and lift up my voice.

The choir were just behind me, singing the Sanctus from Fauré’s Requiem, and they sounded so beautiful I almost lost my cue.

And I was thinking: how lucky am I? How did I get here?

And the answer was in a taxi, buses being so impossible just now, getting stuck in rush hour traffic and feeling stressed by the meter ticking skywards and wondering if I’d ever get here on time…

And in the middle of all this my co-writer and co-performer Lesley Orr sent in the text of her programme note which came in too long for the programme, and its text too small on my phone for me to read, but which this morning reveals itself as the perfect answer to my question.

So here it is.

And thank you, dear Lesley. It’s beautiful.

“The Covid pandemic has been an unprecedented collective experience of confusion and loss. Death haunted us, as waves of shock, confusion and trauma overwhelmed the world.  Grief cut so many people adrift from everything that anchored our lives, our loves, our communities. And the cruellest blow was that all the familiar rituals of dying and death were suddenly gone. So many people were denied the chance to be with their loved ones or to say goodbye. They could not gather to mourn and remember, to share tears and touch, stories and laughter. They were left almost alone to bury their dead and to carry the burden of grief.

Jo strongly believes that theatre has an important role to play in healing. In the time of Covid, she saw that there was a great need for public rituals of mourning, and an opportunity for theatre in Scotland to respond. Elizabeth Newman, Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre, understood exactly what Jo meant and commissioned the Covid Requiem. With her wonderful genius for making connections, Elizabeth also invited Jo to consider a collaboration – and suggested me as partner. So began a creative process which was profound, honest and strangely joyful. In the depths of lockdown, we shared personal stories of sorrow, guilt and loss, reflected on all the big issues laid bare by the pandemic – about power and its abuses; about what and who we value, and the things that really matter in life. And gradually we created a ceremony which we hoped would help express and carry the suffering (both individual and communal), to release deep emotions and help the hard work of healing. 

The Covid Requiem was imagined and first performed in the beautiful Explorers’ Garden at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. It was conceived as a journey. We travelled together through stages, pausing at stations to acknowledge, to name names, to bear witness, to lament, to protest, and finally to rest. Our words and simple actions were in conversation with the beauty, sounds and silences of the Garden, and with the gorgeous music of Duncan Chisholm, played on fiddle and guitar by Patsy Reid and Innes Watson. Our Requiem is not overtly religious, but it draws from the wells of many liturgical and folk traditions.

In this different space and time, accompanied by the beauty of Faure’s Requiem, we invite you to join us on the journey.

Peace to thy soul

And a stone to thy cairn

And may the remembrance of the dead

Be cherished by the living.”

Lesley Orr

We’re performing THE COVID REQUIEM in St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral on Palmerston Place, EH12 5AW, this Thursday and Friday (Remembrance Day) at 7pm.

Tickets on the door, or here: https://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event/the-covid-requiem