The Covid-19 Monologues, presented by Elysium Theatre Company during the Covid-19 lockdowns in the UK in 2020/21 and the aftermath in 2022.

 

I was commissioned to write episode #4. The result was 'Sugar', a critical response (if not challenge) to the toppling of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a policeman in the USA.

​

My take was to dive deep into Colston's original funeral elegy, deliverede by Rev'd Harcourt.  What piqued my curiosity was what I feel to feel coded language that reveals the true nature of the notorious slave trader as recounted by the vicar worried he would lose his living now that his patron was dead.

​

And just who was "Black Mary"? 

​

For me, this was a revelatory, fully engrossing exercise in dramatising and re-imagining a moment in history that still resonates today.

 

Released on 7.10.2020 with Edmund Dehn as the Reverend Harcourt.

Directed by Jake Murray

Filmed and edited by Andrew Glassford