The world's biggest arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, kicks off this week, and this year, as for a few years now, it will feature a series of shows and events looking at death and dying – Death on the Fringe.
This festival-within-a-festival is part of the ongoing charity-led initiative, Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, which works to promote more openness about death, dying and bereavement. The aim is to make people aware of ways to live with death, dying and bereavement and help them feel better equipped to support each other through those difficult times.
Death is never the easiest thing to talk about, but it's so important to discuss it with friends and family before it's too late. What do you want to happen after you die? Have you made a will? Have you thought about your funeral? What about if you become terminally ill? Hopefully, Death on the Fringe is a way to kickstart those conversations in an entertaining and understanding way. And what better place to discuss the issue than at the world's biggest arts festival?
Events at Death on the Fringe range from the deadly serious to the lethally funny, but they all share the common feature of making audiences think about what it means to live well and die well.
For a start, Death on the Fringe provides a fantastic opportunity to hear leading academics and healthcare practitioners share their expertise. For those who've ever wondered about near-death experiences or death bed visions, Professor Allan Kellehear of Bradford University will be evaluating the explanations given for them in his lecture Mystical Experiences At The End Of Life – Really? Meanwhile, Dr Sally Paul of Strathclyde University will be asking the question What Happens To Dead People's Bodies? and discussing how we answer that question when children ask it. Edinburgh University's Professor Scott Murray will also be asking difficult questions – when, where and how you would like to die? – in his lecture Bringing Death Back To Life.
But beyond the lecture series, there are a whole variety of performances, from the astonishing real life tale of a body washed ashore in Sligo in Ireland, A Dream of Dying, to Melbourne comedian Lana Schwarcz's show about surviving breast cancer, Lovely Lady Lump.
TV doctor and comedian, Phil Hammond, will be reflecting on life, the death of two dads, and his still sprightly mother in his show, Life and Death (But Mainly Death), which runs throughout the Fringe, as does his discussion piece Dr Phil's NHS Revolution, for which he's joined by Glasgow Dr Margaret McCartney.
There's a musical show transferring from New York called Dark Heart, about the effect the accidental death of a sister has on a young woman's mental health. The manager of an award-winning burial ground, Liz Rothschild, will be providing food for thought in a show about her experiences, Outside The Box, and Dundee-based writer, Eddie Small, will also be playing a funeral director, discussing the lives and deaths of two corpses in his parlour, in The Death Pantomime.
The Fringe is all about entertainment, of course, but it is also about getting people to think and challenge themselves with different perspectives. Death on the Fringe does exactly that with a topic we all have to face.
Death on the Fringe 2016 runs from August 5-28.
For the full programme, see www.deathonthefringe.org.uk or follow @DeathOnFringe on Twitter.
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