Everyone’s invited to the party of the century.
Put the Fun in Funeral
Award: National Undergraduate Playwritng Award
In April 2024, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named Put the Fun in Funeral the second-place recipient of the National Undergraduate Playwriting Award.
The worst part of being Irish Catholic is attending open casket wakes. The last memory you have of someone you loved in life does not include them smiling or laughing; it includes you staring down at a heavily made-up, bloated, overdressed version of them. Between 2020 and 2022, I attended three open-casket wakes and funerals. At each one, I could not stop thinking: This is not how I want my family to remember me when I die.
Put the Fun in Funeral is a dark comedy play that explores what it would be like to make a funeral funny, to make mourning fun. It’s about celebrating and trying as best you can to remember the deceased the way they want to be remembered — in this case, as the comedic genius they were in life. The play centers around a ghost watching her own funeral. She planned the event extensively before she died, filling it with comedic moments to light up the gloomy environment. The piece started as pure slapstick with satirical bible readings and stand-up comedy eulogies, but later evolved into an examination of grief and the complexities of mother-daughter relationships that persist after death.
I directed the play in Fall 2023. Watch the full performance below.
