Tickets for shrapnel are free, and can be found here

Loneliness has had as significant an impact as financial and health concerns throughout the 2020 global pandemic. Hoping to demonstrate all of the various forms loneliness manifests across the COVID-19 outbreak, Production Lines is proud to showcase an online performance of shrapnel.

Homegrown and created here in Edinburgh, Production Lines is a theatre company run and operated by writer and director Claire Wood. shrapnel, thanks to 2020’s disruption of the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, takes the place of crackers which Wood hopes to produce for next years festival.  

Martha and Viv are best friends, living at opposite ends of the country, and both are refusing to leave their homes. Juggling her kids, a nursing job and four-hour round trips to deliver food to her mother Martha, Helen’s kids are growing paranoid that the pandemic is turning them into social outcasts.

Martha’s got a secret which threatens to shatter the already stretched familial loyalty. And she needs to tell someone before it’s too late. shrapnel is a darkly funny look at life during a pandemic and all the forms the fallout can take.

Breaking from what many creators have done in shifting an already established production into an online format, Wood instead undertook the challenge of producing a piece which with the principle intention of being an online production, saying:

“Rather than reinventing an existing script for performance online, I was interested in writing a play that could only be performed online. Keeping the performance live rather than pre-recorded felt really important. Part of the buzz of theatre is its defiant unpredictability,”

“Whether you live alone or in a busy household, most people have missed social contact during the pandemic – and consequently found their way onto video platforms. But does virtual contact leave you feeling less lonely or does it make you feel worse?”

Seeking to communicate the complexity of isolation and loneliness, Woods is working with co-director Alan Patterson and designer Jennie Landels to infuse technical support, provided for Andy Ellis and Bob Wood, into the script.

Dedicated to their industry, in recognising the disruption to the arts and the economic impacts for freelance and self-employed workers in recent months – tickets for shrapnel are free, with those involved giving their time without charge. Tickets can be obtained here: shrapnel

Performances of shrapnel will begin Thursday, November 19th and run each evening at 8 pm until Sunday, November 22nd. Links will be supplied to audience members on their chosen performance day, with the show lasting just over an hour. 

We would encourage those able to offer a donation for the free event to donate Acting for Others (a charity supporting those who work in theatre), Age UK or Scottish charity Tiny Changes who support young people experiencing and living with mental ill-health.