Susanna Fournier wants to know how you are feeling during this pandemic

On July, 20, 2020, award-winning playwright and actor Susanna Fournier announced a new project with the Canadian Stage. Inspired by the current COVID-19 pandemic, What Happens To You, Happens To Me is a meditative audio guide designed to capture the emotions and feelings of people after long months of isolation.

The guide is 25 minutes long, and acts as a mindfulness exercise that leads the listener through a journey of grief and loneliness. It is voiced by award-winning actress Kristen Thomson, who asks the listener to respond to a set of questions in order to dig deeper into their own emotions and our shared need for human connection. 

Pre-pandemic, Fournier had been working on a production called the Empire Trilogy. Unfortunately, she recalls, “back In April, Brendan Healy, the artistic director at Canadian Stage, called me and told me that  the production . . . that I had been working on for two years had to be canceled because of the pandemic.”  Fournier “was pretty disappointed, and like many people, was grappling with how to adjust to living in a pandemic world and in lockdown, or self isolation.”

But Fournier didn’t let this stop her. “Brendan asked me if there was something I wanted to work on, and I said I was most interested in trying to get a sense of what people’s experiences were,” she says. “With everyone being in isolation and people’s worlds being turned upside down, I started thinking about how to create a questionnaire, but I didn’t want to make it feel like work, I wanted it to feel like more of an experience for the audience rather than a task they had to do.” 

From April to July, Fournier worked on her new project with her team at the Canadian Stage: “I talked with Brendan and Mel Hague, who is the Associate Artistic Director at Canadian Stage, and started to experiment with what it might be to create something that is a bit like a story, a guided meditation, a bit like ‘choose your own adventure’, a thought experiment, etc.” Inside this interactive experience, Fournier “wanted to work with one of the senses, either sound or sight, in order to let people’s imaginations and minds wander”. There’s magic in that wandering: “I find that when we’re listening, our mind creates these pictures and memories, or when we’re reading and there’s pauses, it’s interesting to see what the language prompts in people, where the minds go.”

Since releasing What Happens To You, Happens To Me, Fournier has been delighted by the copious listener feedback. “I’ve received some amazing responses from people who felt inspired to share their experiences, and I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people talking about what they felt while engaging with the piece,” she says. “I was surprised and honoured by the honesty, that people were sharing some very vulnerable experiences, some losses, fears they had, and hopes.”

Although most feedback was positive, many people have been experiencing tough moments during isolation. “One thing that didn’t surprise me is that there’s quite a lot of sadness that people are experiencing, that they feel they don’t have an outlet for,” Fournier notes. “I wish that was more surprising, but maybe it’s surprising for everyone to know that they aren’t alone in that.”

Currently, Fournier is spending her shutdown time focused on two activities. The first is her writing, which helps her cope with processing her emotions during these tough times. The second is teaching, which sees her spending a portion of most days teaching her students online. “For a while, I couldn’t do my teaching job, so I had all of this time, and it was unusual for me,” she explains, “but now I started teaching online and it’s been wonderful checking in with my students and getting back into being creative. I love teaching. It gives me so much energy and inspiration, and it’s been meaningful for the students as well to have the challenge of school transitioning into an online world.” 

For the time being, Fournier will continue writing and teaching at home. But she grows positively ecstatic when she envisions the time (post-pandemic), when she will return to work and once more create live stage performances. In the meantime, What Happens To You, Happens To Me is available on the Canadian Stage website until August 1st, so grab your headphones, go to a quiet place, and listen to the audio clip. You will not regret it! 

For more information on Fournier and her work, follow her on Instagram or visit her website. 

© Tamara von Estorff, SesayArts Magazine, 2020