Life Ends Comedy

The [art from the heart] WHAT:

New-writing, a short comedy about growing older, directed at Southwark Playhouse part of the Directors’ Cut, Art From The Heart – March 2020.

• Life Ends by Chris Fletcher performed by Sharon Facinelli (Alice), Kaitlin Feeney (Age), Lydia Cashman (Youth)

The [art from the heart] WHY:

Aging has always been funny – not just tragic – and the comedy works just as well for men and women in the culture of the ‘precariat’ where many hope as a necessity to be young forever, while they crave the comfort their old parents enjoyed – a flat, a good job and a stable partner.

From the director’s perspective, the character’s mental projections of herself, in a state of inebriation, were there to shape and embody both verbal and physical aspects of the comedy.

At one extreme Alice is the embodiment of a 20-something silly and neurotic character while at the other end she is a stuck and wise 60-something adult individual. Both are tormenting Alice in ‘familiar’ ways in comic ways and so both are pulling her apart mentally and physically to make a choice.

At some level the comedy shifts into an allegory of our mental state in consumer society, where we don’t know how to – won’t or can’t – balance age and youth to various degrees, anymore.

Soundtrack