19:00, Tue 8th – Sat 12th November 2022 at Corpus Playroom
Michaelmas Week 5

You are civilian — Now. But what if you have never been one before? What if your entire adult life has been combat-based? How do you learn to exist within a society that does not require your skills?

What you’ve been trained to do is useless — Are you useless?

As you try to navigate this now unrecognisable world that abandoned you, your past intercuts your present. Have you seen your friends die over there? Have you seen your friends die here? What have you done? And why?

Which rituals did they make you engage in that stopped from one second to the next — Rituals considered torture anywhere else? You believed what they told you: you will become legends — heroes — over there. But it was all a myth; and it’s too late now.

What if you could write a letter about your experiences? A letter to someone who understands? Someone who shares the same scar you do?

But what if you caused their wounds?

Solifuge thinks about the lived realities of being a veteran once you are back home. Trying to understand your experiences and how to move on, this play explores what it means to be haunted by your past and how you deal with that. We follow Corporal Simons as he writes a letter to a child he saw in Iraq. But in the end, the question remains: will anyone ever read this letter?