Announcing "Be The Death Of Me" at the Irondale Center June 28th and 29th

If you've been following our blog, you already know that our awesome team of interviewers and researchers have been exploring every pocket of NY to uncover some of the most unusual, beautiful, and powerful stories about death, dying, and the afterlife. Over the past 5 months we've conducted over a hundred interviews! For excerpts from some of those interviews, click HERE!

Make sure to catch "Be The Death of Me" June 28th and 29th at 8pm at the Irondale! Details HERE 

We're super excited to officially announce the launch of Be the Death of Me, an installation performance piece that offers the audience intimate encounters with matters of life and death in New York City. The audience will navigate their experience inside the atmospheric Irondale Center, housed in a historic church in Fort Greene Brooklyn.

Through a dynamic variety of settings and formats, the audience encounters real stories gathered from a wide cross-section of New Yorkers - everyone from ER nurses to priests, funeral directors to vampires, shamans to crime-scene cleaners. Through this myriad of perspectives, Be the Death of Me uncovers hidden worlds inside New York - places inhabited by those that witness the demise of our bodies as well as those that imagine what may or may not happen to our souls on the other side of life

Here are a few more excerpts from some of our interviews:

"And one thing with arterial embalming, you have an artery right here and they cut open and make an incision and then they get these tongs and they pry out your artery, which is like a big, thick red licorice rope."

-Brandon, Former Embalmer

"The reason people deep down, I think would spend a million dollars on a mausoleum is a real need to be remembered, and to be remembered for, like, as powerful a person as you were."

-Allison, Cemetery Tour Guide/Historian

"Some people just lose their minds and they’re not there anymore, y’know. How do you stab two little kids? It’s almost like writing the prequel to Hannibal Lecter. Who was this guy before he was this animal? That’s what makes it interesting too, you gotta be a little bit morbid. Morbid and compassionate". 

-Crime Scene reporter

We get to the intersection. Cops were already there. There were a lot of empty cop cars there, with their headlights on, their light bars, the blue and the white lights lit up. And I see one officer and he has his flashlight on his shoulder and he’s like waving me this way and he’s like, “You wanna run.” And I started to explain to him, “EMTs never run, that’s just something on TV. What if I get hurt, what if I trip, then you got no EMT.”

-Part-time EMT

Here's our creative team. A special shout-out to our AMAZING team of interviewers and researchers!

Directed by:
Steven Cosson

Cast Includes: Aysan Celik, Donnetta Grays, Daoud Heidami, Nina Hellman, Daniel Jenkins, Trey Lyford, Caitlin Miller, Garrett Neergaard, Stephen Plunkett, Brian Sgambati, and Colleen Werthmann.

Project Director:
Ian Daniel

Project Manager:
Meridith Friedman

Dramaturg:
Micharne Cloughley

Artistic Assistant:
Leonie Ettinger

Set Design:
Mimi Lien

Lighting Design:
Lucrecia Briceño

Sound Design:
Ken Travis

Costume Design:
Chloe Chapin

Projection Designer:
Jeanette Yew

Associate Director:
Mia Rovegno

Associate Dramaturg:
Deepali Gupta

Interviews and research by: Leila Buck, Elsa Carette, Isabel Carey, EllaRose Chary, Chris Cragin Day, Matt Dellapina, Dan Domingues, Jesse Goldman, Donnetta Grays, Ben Gullard, Nina Hellman, Kevin Hourigan, Rachel Karpf, Alex Kveton, David Trevor Lawson, Rachel Lerner-Ley, Carly Mensch, Stephen Plunkett, Victoria Pollack, Alex Rosenthal, Joey Sims, Jay Stull, and Piper Werle.

"Be The Death of Me" June 28th and 29th at the Irondale!  Details HERE