Setting the Stage for Community Grieving
Photo by Kyle Head
Recently, my mom called me and asked if I wanted to head to Toronto to see a new musical with her. She said, “It’s about death and dying, so it’s right up our alley.” My mom knows me well and quickly added, “Oh, it uses Roy Orbison’s music.” As a musician and long-time admirer of the rock music scene from the 60s to the 80s, I could not say no.
In Dreams, a musical by David West Read and Luke Sheppard, centres around Kenna, the former frontwoman of a band. Kenna finds out she has cancer and decides to throw one last party – her own funeral. She invites her former bandmates to the party and she intentionally hides that the party is going to be a funeral.
In Dreams uses the Mexican Day of the Dead cultural practices to connect the living and the dead through a hilarious setting of a Mexican restaurant that moonlights as a funeral parlour and a bed and breakfast. The musical was a ton of fun. And, so was watching what was happening in the audience during the show.
While Kenna was grieving for her own death, so were the audience members all around me. There was audible weeping in the aisles. I saw one person holding another, together reminiscing about the recently deceased. At intermission, I had a lovely conversation with a gentleman sitting near me about his wife who had died a few months prior. He mentioned how much she would have loved In Dreams because Roy Orbison was a favourite of theirs.
This musical seemed to give the audience a social setting where grief – in any way – was accepted and even encouraged. I watched as the theatre, a community-driven space, became a safe haven for all forms of grief. It felt like a reprieve from the grief-denying world we all navigate in our day-to-day lives. Reflecting on In Dreams, I am captivated by the idea that this is what I want for our world: for us to be able to connect in grief to one another, even if we are strangers.
Check out our cartoonist-in-residence Susan Macleod’s cartoon related to this blog post.
