Here We Are by Erin Shields. Here we are is a piece I have been writing throughout this past year. It was not a commission, nor did I have a theatre or audience in mind as I wrote. It was more like an unstoppable outpouring of words and thoughts and emotions to try to make sense of the upheaval of the world as we knew it. Here we are is an expression of pain and longing. It is an act of empathy. It is a search for community in a time of profound isolation and division. There is something intrinsically flawed about this text which aspires to dissolve boundaries between individuals and expose the interconnective tissue between us all. But that’s okay, I think. This text is as much about failure as it is about success; about the journey rather than the destination, and besides, this is only my third draft. I considered printing a hundred copies and snail-mailing it to a hundred friends and colleagues I’ve missed over this past year. But there are more than a hundred. And there are so many people I still haven’t
