"Expiration Date" - Minneapolis Theater on Confronting Death

I just bought my tickets for this theater work called Expiration Date.  A Health Care Directive workshop will be offered free to the community following the Sunday, April 1 matinee performance. This workshop is made possible through a partnership with Honoring Choices Minnesota, an effort of the Twin Cities Medical Society and its Foundation to encourage families and communities to have discussions regarding end-of-life care choices. 

Here is a description of the play:

EXPIRATION DATE is a new multidisciplinary, solo theater work created and performed by Candy Simmons. What would you do if you had six months to live? For some this fate is a question for a party game, for Lucille it’s an earthshaking reality. Through a multi-character performance, layering traditional monologue, video, music, and movement, we experience the story of Lucille, a young woman struggling with the realities of a terminal diagnosis. Lucille’s journey offers an unsentimental, raw, irreverent, and darkly-comedic peek into the approach of the end of one's life. The creation of this work is a blend of fiction and personal experiences woven together with stories Ms. Simmons has collected via video interviews around the subject. Zenon Dance company member Tamara Ober contributes to the project as choreographer.

Here is a statement from the artist:

Dying is messy, its uncomfortable, its incredibly final, and for these reasons I believe the topic of death has almost become taboo in our sterile society. We don’t want to talk about it; we don’t want to think about it. We like options. We like things to be clearly explained, to be tied up in nice little packages. The problem is, that when the unthinkable becomes reality we are so unprepared that life then becomes the obstacle. Our inability to discuss end-of-life, the abject fear of verbalizing the event at all, cheats us out of some absolutely beautiful opportunities along the way, as well as leads to a host of medical conundrums our loved ones are left to solve.   

My intention in creating EXPIRATION DATE was for it to be a conversation starter, and in many ways it already has. An important part of the process in creating this piece has been conducting interviews with the community regarding their experiences with death and end-of-life decisions, as well as health care professionals. These video and audio interviews offered beautiful source material as the work was created, informing character studies and scenes. The process of conducting these interviews figures into the larger scope of the project for me also, allowing the impact to be felt outside of traditional theatre walls. 

Following the two-week Minneapolis run, EXPIRATION DATE will be seeking touring opportunities within hospitals, hospices, and other interested communities across the state of Minnesota.