The Very Space of Absence

Audio and Zoom Project 2020-21

Collaborators: Dr Laura Davies and Dr Emma Salgard-Cunha, University of Cambridge, The Good Death Project

Writer and Director: Patrick Morris

Cast: Caroline Rippin (Seven Arguments with Grief), Patrick Morris (A Look, A Wave), Shane Shambhu (End of Life Care - A Ghost Story); Ruth Hass, Alex Stedman, Richard Bobb-Semple (An Everyday Family Practice)

The Good Death Project at Cambridge University exists to create public space to talk openly and positively about death. We had originally intended to create a live theatre performance in partnership with a museum in Summer 2020 but world events forced us to change tack.

Throughout 2020, Patrick wrote and recorded 3 audio monologues from different perspectives to spur imaginative conversations about mortality. ‘7 Arguments with Grief’ has been used in workshops with end-of-life care professionals (nurses, counsellors, therapists). ‘A Look, A Wave’ was written in the voice of a specific painting by Nicholas Poussin which hangs in Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum. All 3 are available to listen to here.

This project is unique for the Ideas Stage in that there was no specific brief – the artistic outputs emerged out of conversations, reading and thinking together about how The Good Death? Project can engage more people with high quality interventions. Our final commission was a piece for the Cambridge Festival, 2021. We were in the middle of the second wave of Covid-19, so live theatre was still impossible. Patrick wrote a play for Zoom, ‘An Everyday Family Practice’. This explored the intimacy of a family negotiating the prospect of a terminal illness and was inspired by the work of Dr Julie Ellis (University of Huddersfield) and colleagues. The reading of the play has been watched over 1,200 times.