There have been a lot of plays about loss, grief, existential dread, funerals, mortality at the EdFringe this year. And I, for one think it is fucking great. A term I’ve heard once or twice is “Death Play.”

I think the term is useful but perhaps somewhat misleading because each play that I’ve seen and heard about are examining this rather large topic from a myriad perspectives with a myriad of goals.

Some of these shows embody the rituals we have around our own mortality, some are about the love & relationships we have with those we’ve lost, some are asking ‘what is life’s purpose?’

While my show is about grief in the 21st century, it is not really about death, itself. Rather it is a socio-political show exploring how we, as a capitalist society, deal (or rather don’t deal) with death and asking if our society’s would be healthier, happier, & more equitable if we did.

Would having curiosity about the losses of people from different cultural or political backgrounds make us more able to engage in productive dialogues and to reach consensus over complex topics that we face more and more as an an ever globalising world?

PIECES OF US is, in fact, a socio-political play that is asking for more “Death Plays!”

It also examines the ways in which capitalism, as an institution, (not unlike religion) is perhaps our very human attempt to make meaning, find comfort, and to feel in control in what is a fundamentally uncontrollable world.

People have been talking about how prevalent this theme is this year, and while I understand it, I think it is a mistake to speak about like it is a fad topic because of COVID.

People experience loss everyday; people are suffering everyday and many of the losses people face in this world are the result of unjust systems and the less scary and taboo or fad-ish we make death and loss as a topic, the better. Having experienced pretty significant loss at the age of 12, I have been wanting to talk about death publicly for 20+ years and I think about it ALL THE TIME. I am glad that it is a prevalent theme this year and I hope this is a theme that continues to be a more acceptably mainstream. Here’s to more “DEATH PLAYS!”