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Elizabeth Coplan
1.8k Plays11 months ago
Death is the high cost of living. The weight of that knowledge can feel crippling but is it there we find the deepest and most important knowledge of how to live?
After tragedy struck in 2013, Elizabeth Coplan turned to writing to express her personal grief. She wrote many published essays, and later, after experiencing three losses in less than a year, she turned to writing plays focused on this global experience known as death. In 2016, Elizabeth developed the groundbreaking play, Grief Dialogues, and built the nonprofit Grief Dialogues, a theatrical movement creating new conversations about dying, death, and grief.
Elizabeth is the script consultant, director, and producer for Juntos Nos Ayudamos/Better Together, a film about a Hispanic family surviving suicide. She is also the creator and the co-host of the podcast, Out of Grief Comes Art, and the Executive Producer of 8 AM, an award-winning short film on traumatic loss.
’Til Death, Elizabeth’s full-length play about one mother’s choice that unveils a family’s long-buried secrets, opens Off-Broadway in November 2023 under the direction of Chad Austin, Producing Director of the Abingdon Theatre. The play stars Two-Time Tony Award Winner Judy Kaye, Tony Award Nominee Robert Cuccioli, with Whitney Morse, Dominick LaRuffa Jr., Michael Lee Brown, TV and film star Amy Hargreaves.
In addition to an updated production of Grief Dialogues scheduled to open in New York City 2024, Elizabeth is currently working on The Book Club, a new play highlighting the lives of five senior women. She is collaborating with Ina Chadwick on The a Chronicles, a theatrical series of stories that spark conversations about women’s reproductive rights, and on a TV sitcom pilot Act Three, a coming-of-age story about a late-in-life emerging playwright. All before she turns 70 in June 2024.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Ken Ferrante with the Suckin' Rather Than Nothin' Podcast, and I am so excited to have Elizabeth Copeland, who, my goodness, uh, recent premiere of her play, uh, family's in town going to see it. Um, Elizabeth, welcome to the show and tell us what you're up to right now!
00:00:39
Speaker
Well, great.
Themes of 'Till Death' and Existential Exploration
00:00:40
Speaker
Well, thank you, Ken. Well, actually, right now I just finished feeding my family from the ever popular Cats and Delicatessen that is just down the street here in New York, an icon. But my play, Till Death, opened off-Broadway last Thursday night, as you mentioned. It's at Theatre Row.
00:00:59
Speaker
on 42nd Street between 9th and 10th and it will be there till December 23rd and it's an Abington theater production directed by Chad Austin that I'm very, very proud of. It's not an easy topic. It's about, it's the story of an elderly woman's last day and her family who has come to give her a peaceful death and what transpires in that 24-hour period and it is
00:01:28
Speaker
loosely based on about four different deaths that I have. I don't want to say part of because it sounds like I'm not guilty, but that I've actually been at people's bedsides and so forth. I work with my nonprofit grief dialogues. I've worked with a lot of
00:01:46
Speaker
death doulas and hospice nurses and so forth. So my personal experiences have been sort of illustrated even more by some of their stories they shared with me. So it's a tough topic and it deals with dysfunctional families as I would say 99% of most families are just to various degrees. But I try to do it with some
00:02:14
Speaker
with some grace and some dignity and humor and some surprises. And that's kind of what theater is all about. So yes, it's called Till Death.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's our intro. I wanted to thank you so much for doing that. I mean, one of the media things I thought of was around, like, within philosophy, early on, Plato said that, you know, philosophy is just a contemplation of death, right? So, you know, there's this idea, if you look at existential philosophy, you know,
00:02:50
Speaker
What do humans have to deal with? The one crass fact of the high cost of living and death.
Personal Experiences with Death and Grief
00:02:59
Speaker
And just to hear your work on a podcast of brief dialogues and talking about this. So I'm thinking talking and
00:03:13
Speaker
in doing this. How difficult was it for you? Because I see an artist as courageous. I see you doing this as courageous. How difficult was it to the personal, then out there, and then saying,
00:03:29
Speaker
Let's deal with somebody's last day. What's all that and what's that like? It's very interesting because when it was just personal and how this play came about in the first place, there were three different deaths that I was dealing with at one particular time.
00:03:48
Speaker
And what I found, though, was if I tried to talk to my friends or my coworkers about what I just experienced, like, for example, the loss of my cousin to ovarian cancer, and my sister and I were by her bedside for the last 10 days and so forth, when I went back to work, you know, people often assume when you're gone that you're gone on vacation, right? And so they say, oh, I was on vacation.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. As soon as I said that, they just like, oh, I got to go, you know, they, you know, I just kind of got this cold shoulder or a lot of very uncomfortable behaviors. And I really couldn't talk.
00:04:28
Speaker
to anyone about this very natural and 100% going to happen to everybody activity called death, right? And I just, it was so frustrating. And so not being able to share my personal story with anyone or even some of my best friends, they would
00:04:48
Speaker
kind of, you know, oh, yeah, tell me more. But then if I would say things like, oh, it was so beautiful, I was like, wait a minute, your cousin died, and you're saying it's beautiful? How is that beautiful? You know, it just wasn't even if I could talk to them, it seemed like it wasn't resonating in the way I wanted to really be able to share it. So I turned to
00:05:07
Speaker
actually writing dialogue that then went, oh, I guess this is a play. I've been a theater buff forever. I actually was in New York City right after graduating from high school thinking I'd be an actress. My favorite line about that is one day I realized I could eat or I could pay rent. I could not do both. So I got a college degree.
00:05:26
Speaker
and went into marketing, but I've always written. So the art, literally, we have a motto, out of grief comes art, and literally the art, the plays, came out of loss and not being able to talk about it on a personal level. For the most part, with grief dialogues, it's been great to share, because I've written some short plays, but for the grief dialogues, the play cycle, I've brought in other playwrights and short plays from them.
00:05:54
Speaker
So any given production of the grief dialogues is generally six short plays depicting various scenarios around dying, death, and grief. And some of them are funny, and some of them are serious, and some of them are fantastical, and some of them are realistic, something that everyone can experience.
Adapting Plays for Different Mediums
00:06:13
Speaker
And so we have that play that usually runs about 90 minutes, maybe a little less. And then we have a talkback, always a talkback.
00:06:21
Speaker
And people don't have to stay. There's a little intermission, but there's a talkback. And it can be with a grief counselor or a social worker or a hospice worker or just all sorts of people. And I would say, for the most part, 80% of the audience stays for those talkbacks. And they can share their stories. They can ask questions. And that has really just been the most rewarding experience.
00:06:47
Speaker
We were doing that quite successfully. Just prior to the pandemic, we had also pivoted to working with hospitals and palliative care doctors, for example. And so we were doing the show with
00:07:01
Speaker
Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle with the University of Washington Medical School. And we were just about to go to Detroit to do work with Ford Hospital when the pandemic hit. So needless to say, that came crashing down. What I did do was I pivoted and took some of those plays and turned them into Zoom plays. And we would go into some conversations, this time not with medical providers, because those people, they could not even
00:07:31
Speaker
But they were so busy with all the COVID, they just didn't have time to do that. But I offered it to the general public. And for about a year or so, it was very, very successful. We had a lot of people tuning in. I did it with an organization called Reimagine.
00:07:46
Speaker
That was great. But then that even became a little cumbersome because it's a lot of work to take a play and put it on Zoom and make it work on Zoom and then have the talkbacks on Zoom. So that's when I went back to working on a full-length play script that I had or that I had workshopped in 2017.
00:08:08
Speaker
And I then spent 21 and 22 reworking that script and then finally working with the Abington Theater starting this year to mount it off Broadway. And I tell you this story because one of the things that I've noticed is this is meant to be just a straight on play. And the critics haven't been very kind and I will be honest that I think in a large part
00:08:37
Speaker
is because they're not comfortable with the topic. They're not comfortable with the topic of death in the way that we present it. Because the people who come to see it who are more experienced, whether it's just that they've had loss in their own life or their therapist themselves, they seem to really appreciate the play. We're gonna have a talk back this Tuesday with Ken Ross
00:09:03
Speaker
Ken is the son of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who is the founder of the Death and Dying Movement, really, in all her books. And I already noticed, I kind of went on just before we jumped on this podcast here to see ticket sales, and we are sold out.
00:09:18
Speaker
So I actually think that as much as I would like to think that people want to experience death in art in general, that they really want to talk about it even more because of the interest we have in the talk back with Ken Ross. So that's kind of the story of how it came to be.
Audience Reactions and Emotional Processing
00:09:39
Speaker
But out of grief comes art really is my motto.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. And congratulations for having that going. And being in the mix of, you know, I think it is, you know, I'm on the outside, so you would experience, you know, the reaction in a different way. But I would say from the outside, just seeing that
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think a patron going in, it's not just a passing thing and it's a psychological resonance to the material that they're going to interact with.
00:10:21
Speaker
It's something different, right? Something different, it is. And what I will say again with the lovely creative process, if you see the key art, which is the key art is an elderly woman with long flowing gray hair, it's beautiful, black and gay, it's gorgeous, the title till death. I mean, we're not painting a picture of coming to see Spam a lot, you know?
00:10:42
Speaker
realize that you're coming to something that's a little dark, right? So sometimes the reaction, I'm like, well, yeah, I didn't think this was gonna be a song and dance number, did you? But yeah, and it resonates with people. Last night, actually, the performance, it's eight scenes, and during scene eight, I heard a lot of sniffling. So to me also, that's a good thing, because I also feel it's kind of cathartic.
00:11:09
Speaker
I've had a number of people tell me that they really appreciated coming to the play because during COVID they lost loved ones, not necessarily to COVID, but they lost and they couldn't be by their bedsides. And so that was actually cathartic being on the bedside by this woman on the stage. It was actually a wonderful, it just really resonated with some people.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think it could be really helpful. Just in a recent period, late summer through fall, lost some folks and some surprises.
00:11:53
Speaker
it was, you know, there was a reaction for me almost like ducking and hiding. Like I want to just be like, no, no more, no more, no more incoming. And, um, but, but I think you doing this is, is, is, is, is, is really a spectacular thing. I would say just without going deeper into it, I would say that, uh, the topic is one of, um, you know,
00:12:18
Speaker
one of which I wish to learn more and become more resilient. So I appreciate your work on that. I wanted to ask you, Elizabeth, going back, you talked a little bit about your bumping up against art and being artistic. When did you see yourself as an artist, as an artistic person?
00:12:41
Speaker
Well, actually, that's an interesting question. I would have said when I was 13 when my mother forced me to take a class in drama because I was too shy. But in sharing with you earlier, I'm going to change that answer because I wrote a short story in the third grade that people, I had to read it out loud in class, and people really, really enjoyed it. And I remember, and I stood up in front of the class, and I remember
00:13:06
Speaker
not only the story, although I don't remember the actual story, but what I do remember was the fun and exhilaration of standing up and reading something that I could feel that my classmates were really leaning into. I guess that's a little bit of performance art right there. I'm going to say at an early age, I really did enjoy the arts, in this case, maybe more
Creative Process and Art's Importance
00:13:29
Speaker
dramatic art. But even as I got older and didn't have time for performance art,
00:13:35
Speaker
I love to write, so I write personal essays, just all kinds of things. And I had a 40-year career in marketing, so I did a lot of writing around that, not necessarily artistic writing, but definitely, you know, you have to be pretty creative in writing marketing and advertising.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to mention something on that. It's just a realization I had recently that, you know, because I want to always do more writing creatively. And I work as a union rep in my day job. And all I do is process and write. And I remember thinking one time, like, I was like, ah, man, shit, I ain't doing any writing.
00:14:20
Speaker
I reminded myself like this, it's technical, there's creative flourishes, I write, I put a lot of effort into it in making my argument. And I'm like, no, you're keeping up those, if you want to write something else, that's fine.
00:14:36
Speaker
I you know that type of writing I think sometimes we forget about that and and the the you know the deep like you are writing you're writing and harnessing those skills and you just got to kind of transfer them over I think a lot of people I I mean I didn't even think about that overtly I think a lot of people miss how they're working their muscles you know yes absolutely absolutely yeah um I wanted to ask you Elizabeth what is art
00:15:06
Speaker
What is art? That's a good question. Well, boy, I should have really thought about that a little bit. To me, art is anything that, well, not just anything, but art is something that comes from the heart, whether it's...
00:15:19
Speaker
a melody or a poem, words, or my sister is an artist in, she paints and she draws beautiful work, beautiful work. And I can think of anything that if you, it's in your heart, in your head, and you put it in some sort of external form.
00:15:41
Speaker
If you just have the ideas percolating in your head, those are ideas, that's not art. To me, art has to be literally a physical, some sort of creative process, physical process that takes what's in your head and puts it into some tangible form, whether sheet music or whatever. So yeah, I think that's taking ideas and presenting them in such a way that other people can
00:16:07
Speaker
that it feels approachable to other people, I think. I like that. I like that a lot. I wanted to ask you, within Till Death, it's obviously a big project. Do you want to mention some of the folks you have working on making this thing real? Yes, of course.
00:16:25
Speaker
Well, I'll start with the Abington Theatre Company itself. Chad Austin is the director, and he is a producing director. And if you go to the Abington Theatre Company's website, right there on the home page it says, Brave New Work. And they really embraced this, and Chad in particular. So when he not only saw the script and cast the script, and we have
00:16:54
Speaker
Tony Award winners, Judy Kay, Bob Cottole, we have TV veteran Amy Harbrives on it, we have young Michael Lee Brown, who is, he was Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway for quite a while, we had Whitney Morris, who's making her off Broadway debut, we have Don LaRouche Jr., those are the six cast members, they're incredible.
00:17:17
Speaker
But the play really becomes an entire piece of art to me because Chad is not only taking my words and casting it with those people and putting my words in their mouths and telling them how to move, but he's put it on a stage that is a work of art. The set is not, I mean, I wrote the play to be set in the living room. I originally thought it would be
00:17:43
Speaker
in a community theater, maybe regional theater if I was lucky, and it would just be a simple living room set, lights up, lights down. Well, once Chad got a hold of it, it was much more representational. And the set itself, I can send you some pictures. Look, it's almost like a maze of stucco walls on which they do projections.
00:18:08
Speaker
Oh my goodness. What is so cool is because there's a theme in the script about photo albums, but rather than have actual photo albums mounting and piling up, which is the way I originally had it, he's got the photos being projected on these walls of the set. Now, what's really cool about that is he asked the actual actors to send the designer
00:18:35
Speaker
photos from their various ages. So when you see, for example, there is a picture of Lucy, the character of Lucy, played by Amy Hargreaves, when she's 18. Well, the picture that's up there is actually a picture
00:18:52
Speaker
of Amy Hargreaves at 18. That's incredible. I love that. And then references that she, in the plays, reference, for example, that she's in a photo that they're looking at wearing a green jacket, I believe. So the
00:19:08
Speaker
artist has taken that photo of 18-year-old Amy Hargreaves and photoshopped a green jacket onto it. So it looks like it's exactly what she's looking at in the album. The characters of the mother, Mary, and her husband Michael, they recently married. So what someone has, again the designer's done, is taken a picture of Mary looking very lovely and Michael looking very handsome.
00:19:37
Speaker
actors and then photoshopping together so it looks like an actual wedding picture. So really using the actor's own image is not just representational but they're actual images at a certain point in their life and making it into this family's photo album.
00:19:55
Speaker
which is just incredible. And then the additional thing is because the character Anne, the story is kind of told through Anne's eyes. And she is an artist. She's like a portrait painter, if you will. And so they've also done some original portraits of the characters that then kind of also are projected onto the set.
00:20:19
Speaker
So again, you look at the set itself, Chad chose a palette of greys and blues.
00:20:27
Speaker
very soft, kind of muted colors, and everything on the stage is that. So the chairs are gray, and the sofa is a light gray, and the costumes, it's set in present day, but the costumes, the people, the characters are wearing navy and off-white, and it just all looks like this lovely, I don't know,
00:20:52
Speaker
I was a big fan of Picasso's blue period. Oh my goodness, yes. It reminds me of that, although now I know more about Picasso and I'm not a big fan of Picasso's, but I am a big fan of Picasso's blue phase, blue era, and so it's called. Yeah. That's what this set reminds me of. It definitely reminds me of just an overall work of art. And then you have the acting. And then my words is only, to me it feels like just
00:21:19
Speaker
one eighth of the whole thing. Um, anyway, I just, I, yeah, you almost believe it. Well, it is, it is, it is exciting. I love to hear, you know, kind of like the animated, I think a lot of times, at least on my show, when something comes together, I like to, to, to know how it comes together and the hands that are in there. And I can't imagine like the vision that you have, like,
00:21:45
Speaker
I get excited as far as the artist, when you work in collaboration and you had an idea of what that room would be, and when you saw what that had developed, you'd be like, wait a second, what is that? That somebody is developing out and creating a way of seeing.
00:22:04
Speaker
That's the piece working together on art. That's the big thing, you know, behind my show, like, it's all about a collective. So I like, you know, all I do is every day is I just organize people to make things better or to stick up for themselves. And then, you know, when you see it with art, when you see it like in organizing around art or when people get together and
00:22:27
Speaker
create the bigger thing. There's just so much great energy. It could go in different directions. It can bump together and crash and burn and not happen, or it could come together and bring in. And I saw that, the incredible cast. I can't imagine you sitting back again, then seeing the set and you're like, whoa, cast.
00:22:51
Speaker
cast this thing too. I should add that the chat actually also brought in some original music. There's some original music to this piece, which again I didn't cross my mind, but the sound is very important. He brought that in
00:23:09
Speaker
The cast has been extraordinary and again the collaborative spirit that just jumped out of this project became to me just very vital. So it got cast. Now the actors of a cast brought to it certain talents.
00:23:28
Speaker
that maybe I did not explore in my character development. So then one of my jobs was to go back and take the script and upgrade, if you will, some of the dialogue between the characters because now I have this in the case of
00:23:47
Speaker
of Judy Kaye for example, I have this wonderful sensitive musical actress who really puts forth this loving mother vibe without any effort and now I can work with that a little bit more and originally that role actually didn't have much dialogue but now I have an actor that can really handle the tough dialogue so I had an opportunity to play with that. The other one that I played a lot with
00:24:15
Speaker
that i enjoyed so michael lee brown is a young man as i mentioned he was in dear evan hansen now i have a his character is nick and he's 16 years old but this is a young actor that's really really talented so he had just minor dialogue really and now i have this great actor so that role is completely changed much more substantial than what i had originally written because of who
00:24:42
Speaker
who was cast in it. And Bob Cattoli was the original character, Michael, was supposed to be very curmudgeon-y and kind of a villain. And then all of a sudden I've got this debonair, you know, Tony-nominated musical theater guy that nobody was going to believe was a villain, right? Nobody. So then I had the really hard task of changing that character to fit with the actor. And it actually, I'll be honest, at first I resisted.
00:25:12
Speaker
What five years that has been a commercially old man but once I got into it I realized that by it embracing the actor in this role I could actually make the script even richer so I could let the old character you can let the old character die yeah
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, it is great to hear. And I'll tell you too, just as far as my experience of it, the great PR person, Andrea Alton, introduced us to each other. And I tell you, it's been so, so wonderful.
00:25:57
Speaker
to connect with her and to connect with these plays. I'm originally from out in Rhode Island, so I live out in Oregon now, but whenever I've been able to bump
00:26:12
Speaker
with the show up against Broadway. And it's exciting. It's exciting to me because, you know, knowing the city, you mentioned Cats, Delicatests, and I was thinking of Yona Schimel's, Knisha's over there. Like, so my brain jumped. Let's pause there. Yona Schimel's still around over there in Brooklyn?
00:26:34
Speaker
I don't know. I lived here back in the 70s.
Cultural Reflections and Art as Essential
00:26:41
Speaker
I remember the good thing was, because it was my early 20s, didn't have any money. In New York City, in case you haven't heard folks, it's rather expensive. But you could go to Yona Shimbles, you can get a bag of
00:26:57
Speaker
canishes and some mustard and salt and pepper, and you could go for a good day and a half, two days with that meal. It leaves a good day and a half, yes. It definitely sickly rims food. So good, the sights and sounds and smells of New York City. Elizabeth, the role of art. What do you think the role of art is? I mean, what should it be doing for us?
00:27:26
Speaker
You know, to me, that's probably the most important thing other than, you know,
00:27:33
Speaker
food and love, I think the next category would be art because, well, I'll give you, for example, I'm just finished reading this book called Chatter, and it talks about how being in nature calms your, and I don't know about you, but I always got chatter going on, and it's not in my brain, and it's not necessarily helpful. But by being in nature, just your whole body just kind of relax. But the cool thing is you don't have to like,
00:28:03
Speaker
go to the woods you can actually get the same effect according to this book by looking at a painting of the woods or the seaside or you know so you can be among art you can go to the mat and have the same thing happen or you can you know so you can experience art the same thing with music it can it can excite you it can calm you down there's just so many ways that that art actually gets in your bones in a positive way
00:28:31
Speaker
that I think that really, food, water, air kind of category and love, we all need love. And if you then have art in some form, that's what life's all about to me. And I think it's also a way, I think a lot of people will say to me actually, they'll say, oh, you're so creative, I'm not that creative. And I often say, you know, baloney on that. You're creative in some way, you just maybe don't.
00:28:57
Speaker
know quite what your outlet might be but there's all kinds of ways you don't have to write the great american novel you could write a haiku poem or you could doodle you know you doesn't even have to be fine art just anything that kind of releases
00:29:14
Speaker
whatever you're feeling, emotional stress. I have a friend who does the coloring books. She loves to color. And that's fine too. It doesn't have to be fine art, I guess is what I'm saying. But I think it's vital. I think the role of art is so sad that one of the things in schools, when they look to cut budgets, the first thing they do is they cut art.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, that is just so wrong. So many times I see kids that put them on the stage, put them backstage, learning a trade, doing some sort of art form. I've seen it transform a lot of kids who are troubled, a lot of kids are having trouble processing things they're going through.
00:29:56
Speaker
If they have some sort of art expression, it's just, I could go on for days and I think they have studies. I agree because in part of it too with art, there's this process of making, doing within it that can be part of your art practice, but you can also experience the art
00:30:17
Speaker
whatever it is in and of itself as complete experience. And, you know, I find, you know, the show, you know, the show, you know, doing art philosophy and I say art philosophy and liberation people. Right. Oh, yes. Trying to find.
00:30:33
Speaker
who they are and state who they are. But yeah, part of the thing I mentioned, my labor rep work, well, I'm labor rep in K to 12 schools. So here's the thing, it absolutely destroys me.
00:30:53
Speaker
and kills me. When we look at just the amount of students, the way they come about things, their diverse talents, neurodiversity, everything all around, and we haven't fixed this, but we've got a narrow corridor of
00:31:12
Speaker
hit these basics and testing the basics. Meanwhile, we just completely ignore neuroscience and what music is sticking your hands in glue and
00:31:27
Speaker
paper and plays. And, you know, kids are suffering. So for me, I agree with you. It isn't just, oh, I remember our society did this, or did it ever do this? Kids literally aren't being served by not having those options because they're not able to develop. And that just pisses me off about this. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Me too. Me too.
00:31:50
Speaker
You know, I think now, I mean, I'm not going to say I would be living on the streets necessarily, but who I would have been if I didn't have a robust theater program to have gone into when I was 13.
00:32:07
Speaker
I probably would have been fine, but I just, I shuddered to think because I was very shy. So I don't think I would have accomplished what I have, not just in my art, but I had a good 40 year marketing career. My husband and I had our own business, raised two sons, they're now grown and so forth. I have a level of confidence I feel that I gained by that drama class when I was 13. So to think,
00:32:34
Speaker
kids don't have those opportunities now it's just heartbreaking to me yeah yeah and you know and one of the things there's a lot of people uh a lot of people fight for it and you know for me when it comes to the human brain uh the human brain just just needs a whole bunch of different angles and colors the things you talked about feeling better with
00:32:56
Speaker
with with with colors seeing things um i wanted to uh i wanted to uh ask uh ask you and so i got it's a little bit different like so there's the big the big question why is there something rather than nothing right and and and you know i don't want to mix it up or anything like that but i think like
00:33:20
Speaker
And some of the things we're talking about, you know, mortality, finitude, death.
Philosophical Exploration in 'Till Death'
00:33:25
Speaker
And like I said, Plato saying, you know, philosophy, this contemplation of death, this brute fact. And I think that the question I ask is about creation, but it's also about meaning. And, you know, so
00:33:46
Speaker
For for I wanted I wanted to ask you like the question itself is Either two ways. Why is there something rather than nothing or? Upon death, is there something or nothing? Right, right? Actually, those are both very good question. I don't take the second one because I actually might play Yeah Yeah
00:34:13
Speaker
there without giving too much away, there is a scene between Mary, the elderly woman who is dying, and her 16-year-old grandson. And Nick, the grandson, asked Mary if she believes in heaven, I believe, because his father does not. His father does not believe in heaven.
00:34:34
Speaker
And he jokingly says, my dad believes when you're dead, you're dead. And that usually gets a big laugh from the audience. Mary responds with that she's not quite sure if she believes in heaven, but what she does believe is that a person's spirit lives on, and that that spirit is there to help and guide those left behind. And she says to Nick something like, and I will be with you when I'm
00:35:03
Speaker
when I'm dead. And he just really, he loves the idea of his grandmother. They have a very special relationship. He shares his secrets with her and always has and that sort of thing. So to think that your loved one is still there, I think whether it's nothing out of something or something out of nothing, I think that there is definitely something after the end.
00:35:27
Speaker
Again, I'm not sure if it's an eternal reward, but there's a presence. I know myself, one of the reasons I wrote this play is I often feel the presence of my father and or my mother who are two very different personalities. So to have them kind of in the room behind me when I'm dealing with an issue or even being creative, I can channel my mom.
00:35:52
Speaker
I just think that I just feel their presence a lot. And in the play, Nick's mom, Lucy, who's a trial attorney, says that she feels the presence of her dad, who died many years ago, that strong presence and that confident presence, she feels him when she's in court, when she's in a trial, she feels her dad. So I definitely think that there's not nothing
00:36:20
Speaker
there's definitely something afterwards. And it may just be the spirit of someone you care about is walking alongside you, particularly in times of stress. I think that's really important. I love that. I'm glad. I'm happy to hear you say that, that presence. And, you know, for me, it just seems like I'm the question, you know, something rather than nothing, life and death and afterlife. I've talked to so many people. You can't tell a human being that they can't feel.
00:36:49
Speaker
Something or somebody near that you can't you can't you can't you can't tell humans that and I don't whatever that mystery is. That's That feels pretty right. So everybody we've been talking with Elizabeth Copeland and just chatting And one of the things I'm really excited to hear about as as we finish up here Elizabeth is just kind of like we're
00:37:15
Speaker
where folks can find the play, your art, where people could be like, hey, I want to learn some more. Oh, and the podcast, and the podcast as well. Yeah. Well, the best place to go is griefdialogues.com.
00:37:34
Speaker
And if you click on the tab that says Art, there's a dropdown box and it has Stories. We take submissions for people who write stories or poems. We've also had some artwork on there. We take those submissions so you can see all of those under Stories. But we also have, there's a journal where I often write a blog post. There's a link to a couple of movies. One I wrote, one called Honoring Choices.
00:38:01
Speaker
one I was executive producer on called 8 a.m. There's a link to the play, Till Death. If you're in the New York area, it is running at Theatre Row on 42nd Street until December 23rd, and after that we'll have a link to where it is too. There will also be licensing opportunities for it. It's a short play, it's about 75 minutes, so it lends itself really well to
00:38:25
Speaker
being performed and then having an opportunity for people to discuss it. That's really what I wanted. I like my place to be about the discussion process. So going to griefdialogues.com, click on all the things you can learn more about me. You can contact me. It'll have all the art. It'll have the podcast.
00:38:41
Speaker
under art and some resources. We partner with a lot of great organizations to give additional help for people who need, whether it's grief counseling or information on medical aid in dying, which is legal in 11 states.
00:39:02
Speaker
There's how to set up an advanced care program, that sort of thing, just a little bit of everything. But when you come to it, we do have a very, I hope people will go, even if it's just to their homepage, because we have a beautiful sort of video of splashes of color, and then the term out of grief comes art. So it's really just a very soothing, fun thing to look at. Just come to our website and check it out. Love it. What was the website again?
00:39:30
Speaker
griefdialogues.com. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, yeah, I got to tell you, uh, Elizabeth, uh, so nice to chat with you. Um, and again, a big, big shout out to Andrea Alton. I mean, I know for me, put me close, close proximity, uh, to, to, to Broadway. And, uh, it's, it's clear Elizabeth to chat with you. You've been doing philosophy your whole life. So
00:39:57
Speaker
You know philosophy and meeting and all these big questions and um, just you know, really congratulations for I mean putting any art out there is It's it's a big thing it's like ripping open your chest to be honest with you
00:40:15
Speaker
to say potshots, especially if they're not comfortable with your topic. But I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did. I'm hoping more people will talk about life and death and what's important to them. Another big theme for me for this play is saying goodbye and realizing that you don't have to be like near someone who's dying to say goodbye. They may be already gone.
00:40:40
Speaker
And there's no time limit on saying goodbye and saying, I love you. And that's really what this play to me is all about.
00:40:48
Speaker
That's a beautiful thing. In conclusion, I've had a guest on Lauren Rhodes, and Lauren is really incredible. Does like a lot of cemetery stuff and dealing with death and art around that. But she had a magazine for a while that really kind of helped me in this area. And she collected it in a book, and it was called Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues.
00:41:16
Speaker
There's something freeing around it all that it's okay. These things exist. You can look. You can be uncomfortable.
00:41:28
Speaker
You can spend time, you can read these stories, you can hear people talking about these things and it is not easy. It's about as difficult as you can imagine maybe at points but I think there's something about you doing that and that type of curiosity and wonder about the discomfort which
00:41:48
Speaker
for me is a good process to encourage and best of luck. Everybody check this out and just hopefully kill it over on Broadway, right? Like literally, I guess.
00:42:04
Speaker
I would, yeah, literally, and I would love to do that. I'm not sure if it's, you know, most people, well, what I'd like to do with it is to make discussions around death normal. And so, so however it goes, whether Broadway or theaters across the country, if we could start talking about what were something
00:42:22
Speaker
an act we're all going to do. We are all going to die. So if we could start talking about it and not be so afraid of it and embrace the beauty around it, I think it'll help us all really. But thank you so much. I just really enjoyed talking with you and
00:42:37
Speaker
I love your topics and creativity. It makes me smile. I love it. Thank you. It makes me smile, too. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. I will say this in conclusion is that I definitely want to
00:42:54
Speaker
make it out east. And it makes it a little bit, you know, to visit and such. And I start thinking about Broadway. I start thinking about New York City. I'm up in Rhode Island, but I know once I get out that way, I can take the train down to New York City. So I'll hopefully make it over that way. And I know you're based just as far as folks for the show.
00:43:18
Speaker
of the show being based out in Oregon. I believe, Elizabeth, you're based in Seattle, not too far north of where I am. I'm based in Seattle, Washington, yes, yes. And we've actually done quite a few productions of grief dialogues out there, and hopefully we'll do another production in this coming year when I'm back in Seattle. So that would be great.
00:43:36
Speaker
That's great to hear. Love to Seattle. I'm a transplant to Oregon. So a lot of times I don't dig into rivalries or city rivalries. I just like, I'm like, I don't have that bag. So like I adore Seattle. I adore Portland. I adore Seattle sports teams. I adore Portland Portland.
00:44:03
Speaker
But yeah, thanks again, Elizabeth. And best of luck with everything. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. This is something rather than nothing.
00:44:27
Speaker
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00:44:48
Speaker
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00:45:16
Speaker
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