This play is about death, but it’s also warm, witty and life-affirming

2 hours ago 2

Actors might joke about dying on stage, but Genevieve Morris’ latest play actually has her preparing for the great hereafter. She’s the star of MTC’s one-woman show, Dying: A Memoir, adapted by writer Benjamin Law from Cory Taylor’s masterful last book. The play’s subject is right there in the title, and it’s had cast and crew thinking hard about the inevitable.

“One of the dramaturges and I made a pact that by the end of this season, we’ll have both done our wills. We’ve both got children. I’ve been through two bouts of cancer and treatment and I don’t have a will. How ridiculous,” says Morris.

A Memoir</i> pays homage to those you’ve lost.

Taylor was an Australian writer whose two novels, Me and Mr Booker and My Beautiful Enemy, drew great acclaim. They were only written after Taylor was diagnosed with melanoma, however, and just five years on from the publishing of her debut novel, she died surrounded by family in Brisbane. Her death didn’t come as a surprise: indeed, she spent the last period of her life writing a book about her experience of dying that was, thanks to extraordinary efforts of her publishers, released while she was still alive.

Law was a friend of Taylor’s. They met while both were studying for a PhD in screenwriting, and later he would admire her taste when she visited the Brisbane bookshop in which he worked. “We became kindred spirits fast,” he says.

It was at that bookshop that the slim, hardback volume Dying: A Memoir was launched. Law was living in Sydney by that point, and read it at the airport in one sitting. “I just wept, because it felt like a conversation with a friend. I knew her voice so well. It felt very strange to be already grieving this friend who was still alive. And then she died shortly after.”

When Melbourne Theatre Company commissioned a stage adaptation, the first problem facing Law was: “‘Who wants to see a play about death?’ It’s not a crowd-pleasing proposition. It’s not a musical, you know? But at the same time, anyone who’s familiar with the book would know that the book is actually quite life-affirming and really useful. You feel really equipped afterwards to know in very unsentimental, practical and often quite wise and funny ways about what to expect about what’s coming up.”

Despite the grim-sounding title, ticket pre-sales for the show have been strong. It turns out a lot of people do want to see a play about death. That might be because the reality of dying is such an awkward subject that many of us arrive at completely unprepared. Taylor’s memoir offers a warm, witty corrective to that ignorance.

Morris always thought she had a pragmatic approach to death. That changed after her experience with cancer turned out to be an “apparently very-close-to-the-end” one. “At that moment, I panicked and went, ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on. No, no, this wasn’t in the plan’. Just freaking out. Prior to that, I was like, ‘Well, we’re all gonna die. It’s just the way it is’. But then when it became quite real, it was absolutely terrifying.”

She had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, “the cancer that you want to have if you’re going to have cancer”, she says. After an 18-month remission period, it returned with a vengeance. “That was like, ‘okay, we do need to do the full on treatment, the stem cell transplant, almost kill you and then bring you back’.”

Law turned 43 during Dying’s first week of rehearsals. It got him thinking about all the friends who didn’t get to enjoy that privilege: comedian and activist Stella Young, radio producer Jesse Cox, musicians Tara Simmons and Jack Colwell. All died in their 30s.

“I’ve had years where it’s just been a lot of funerals. And one of the questions this play brings up is: what is a life well lived? What does a good death look like? What does a good farewell look like?”

That last question is put into vivid relief by the fact that Taylor’s own mother didn’t receive the send-off for which she’d hoped. “I’ve been to some really shoddy funerals that have really compounded the grief and compounded the pain. The good funerals that I’ve gone to have involved people who have really asked themselves what a good farewell looks like,” says Law.

We’ve all lost loved ones, and Morris says that everyone will bring their own experiences to the show. That includes its performer herself: “At the moment, there’s maybe two or three little passages of dialogue that could really trip me up, in terms of me getting emotional. Which is a gift, an absolute gift. It pays homage to those you’ve lost or those that have struggled. But it’s a couple of moments I go, ‘Right-o, put your big-girl pants on for this bit’.”

But most people who’ve known any kind of intimacy with the reaper probably realise that sadness is only one of the colours on its emotional palette. Dying: A Memoir is stuffed with moments of elation, regret, acceptance and absurdity.

It’s also full of laughs, helped along by the fact that Morris is a killer comedian. “That’s how we cope. That’s how I coped with a lot of my stuff, cracking up the surgeon or the oncologist. And they couldn’t believe it because all of my levels were low, but I was still managing to have a joke, make them laugh,” she says.

Law says that one of the first lines Morris delivers as Cory Taylor is about how dying is a lonely business. “It’s the thesis of the play, that this silence around dying makes us really isolated when we are in that process.”

He hopes the play functions to counter that loneliness, to inspire people to reconsider their own relationship to death. “What better way to explore that than in theatre where you’re inherently not alone. The cliche is you come in as strangers, you leave as community. We’ve all experienced something communally. We’ve got each other in this space and that’s how we want people feeling as they leave.”

Law says he’s lost track of the number of times the crew has been simultaneously laughing and crying during rehearsals. “But those are the kinds of plays I seek out as well. That’s what I hope we’re giving to people.”

“Yeah,” says Morris. “Puffy eyes but sore ribs.”

Dying: A Memoir opens October 25 at Arts Centre Melbourne. artscentremelbourne.com.au

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.