Interviews: Haley McGee and Helen Wood

Theatre has been obsessed with death for centuries. “Take Hamlet questioning life and death in his famous soliloquy,” points out writer and performer Helen Wood. ('To be, or not to be, that is the question', if you’re not in the know). “However, as successive generations are less inhibited, there’s a gradual and beneficial change to people being more open about mental health issues, suicide and death.”

This could partly be to do with the destigmatisation of therapy, of the anti-small talkification of modern society and constant ‘It’s good to talk’ campaigns, but after the two years we’ve just had, death is on a lot of people’s minds. Nearly 6.5 million people have died of Covid (so far) – it would be odd to think that, given this level of loss and grief, death is something anyone can ignore.

“Western culture has shied away from death, especially in the last 100 years,” says Haley McGee. “But as more people confront their fears on a personal level, their ability to share that can liberate those around them to discuss their own fears. And when those conversations are recorded, so that millions can listen in, the willingness to talk about the things we’re scared of snowballs.”

So that’s what Wood and McGee are doing – portraying their experiences with death in front of audiences in order to open up the conversation just a little bit more. Wood’s Let’s Talk About Philip is a fast-paced, darkly comic journey she embarked on to discover the circumstances that led up to her brother Philip’s death by suicide years ago. And McGee is showcasing Age Is a Feeling, a show about how our relationship with mortality radically changes the way we live.

“Thirty years of family silence is broken just after my mother’s funeral when my father says, ‘Let’s talk about Philip’,” says Wood. “I embark on a quest that takes me back to scenes from my childhood, exotic Asian locations, a coroner’s court, and the rooftop from which my brother jumped.”

Helen Woods, photo by Elmar Rubio

An outpouring of death onto the stage is useful in many ways. It’s about illuminating not just the people we’ve loved and lost, but the need to think about death and how it affects each of us. McGee’s Age Is a Feeling makes innovative use of audience help to create a show that’s never the same two nights in a row. The audience chooses six out of thirteen stories that can be told each night. The rest are left by the wayside to remind us that our paths can change dramatically due to seemingly insignificant choices.

“It’s a covert rallying cry against cynicism and regret. A call to seize our time,” says McGee. “I want people to reflect on their lives, and their relationship with mortality, regret, and things unsaid.”

Both Wood and McGee agree that there are no cons when it comes to talking about death onstage. How could there be when it only serves to put this difficult topic front and centre where it should be, particularly for people who are grieving or considering it, or afraid to open up about confusion, fear and pain. From Wood’s point of view, shielding people from death is fatal.

“It’s something that will happen to us all, but a subject that’s so often kept hidden,” she says. “And that is often to the detriment of people in crisis, just as my brother was.”

“The inevitability of death is perhaps the only universal truth for all living things,” adds McGee. “This strikes me as excellent fodder for a live performance, something experienced among a collective of strangers.”