The Loneliness Project
Joanna Nowak Photography
It’s been nearly three years since EBP produced a show. We’re finally back at Philly PACK May 19-21 with The Loneliness Project.
As the title indicates, we’re barely scratching the surface of another significant facet of the human experience!
We began the project in January with a series of listening sessions. Participants talked about what the word “loneliness” meant and what the experience looks, feels, and sounds like. We discussed the words and feelings that live adjacent to loneliness: isolation, longing, depression, anxiety, shame. We determined that the experience is universal and yet entirely unique.
From these sessions came a collaboratively generated (see next posts to meet the collaborators) show that takes audiences into the internet and under the sea. Through dance and film we explore memory loss and dementia; through song we (cheekily) consider whose grass is really greener. Throughout we ask what it is to endure disappointments, endings, and upheavals with grace, humility, and curiosity. Curiosity, in fact, is a primary source of show inspiration.
I came across poet David Whyte’s Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words during the pandemic and found the chapter on loneliness compelling. Whyte’s approach, his writing, intrigues and seeks. It is both comforts and provokes. With Whyte’s help, I named and invited in something I was feeling acutely, but was previously afraid to acknowledge. Whyte tells us the loneliness is a privileged emotion known only to humans. I experience loneliness in comparison or juxtaposed to its opposite. I know what it is to be lonely because I know what it is to not be lonely.
I am not lonely when making theatre. Theatre allows me (us), to use Whyte’s words to “pay real attention to voices other than our own…to find the healing power in the other.”
After a too-long hiatus I am ready to hear other voices and to heal. If you are now or have every felt alone or lonely, I hope you’ll join me.
Lauren Leonard
Founder, Earlie Bird Productions