TALAWA, one of Britain’s foremost black theatre companies, has produced a set of short films reflecting on a momentous year when the truth of the Windrush scandal was finally revealed, the Black Lives Matter movement exploded and black people have been found to be four times more likely to die from the Covid-19 epidemic than their white counterparts.

Based on verbatim interviews with those in the front line of the battle against Covid-19, Tales from the Front Line brings home a renewed and painful awareness of the inbred racism in British society.

The first of the two has a primary school teacher struggling to convey her responses to the lack of support for staff and students to the increasing health emergency.

Faced with little information to reassure either the staff or the unsettled and increasingly frightened children, her own bewilderment turns to anger.

The second film is even more sharply etched as we share the daily experiences of an NHS recovery worker in a psychiatric hospital.

Less articulate than the teacher, she nevertheless registers the impotent frustration at a society that claps the workers but were not on the streets supporting an NHS staff pay rise: “How many of you voted Conservative?” she queries.

Both pieces complement the powerful documentary nature of the interviews with skilful movement.

In the first, two black male dancers punctuate the teacher’s account with physical expression of her inner turmoil, while the girl in the second is constantly on a restless journey to a final recognition that the virus of racism is even more pernicious than any physical threat.

Download available from the Talawa website. Further episodes follow in January and March 2021.