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A Love Letter to Penelope Cruizer – Bristol Old Vic Sudden Connections

 

 

About A Love Letter to Penelope Cruizer

A Love Letter to Penelope Cruizer (2021) was made a year into Caroline’s struggle with Long Covid, when the condition was just starting to come into the medical vocabulary. The artist caught Covid in early March 2020 and didn’t get better. For years. In 2021, Caroline had finally accepted that her walking wasn’t going to increase quickly and that she was ultimately housebound. She spent some time on Google and spent all the money she had on a mobility scooter. She called her Penelope Cruizer. Caroline still remembers that first moment of being able to get outside on her own; it allowed her to finally have a bit of independence after so long. Caroline remembers weeping with joy when Penelope Cruizer enabled her to go to the shop on her own for the first time. This film is a playful love letter to that scooter. But really it is a love letter to Caroline’s partner who nursed her through that time, it is a thank you to them for sticking around in the hardest of times while Caroline struggled to come to terms with a long-term illness. At the end of the film, Caroline includes images of her friends who are part of the Disabled Ramblers group, whose spirit made her cope with the challenge of her own in-built ableism.

Film credits:
Performed and created by Caroline Williams
Co-directed by Caroline Williams and Christina Hardinge

A Love Letter to Penelope Cruizer (2021) was a Sudden Connections commission for Bristol Old Vic and chosen to be part of LADA Screens in 2024.

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