Photo: MJ Bentley
2025: RMIT Capitol Theatre
Writer, performer and co-director, Michele Lee
Dramaturg and co-Director, Claire Granata
Video Artist, Vanghoua Anthony Vue
Sound Designer and Composer, Rafe Yang
Lighting Designer, Ceiling Lighting, Rob Curulli
Outside eye, Darren Thao
Visual assets student intern Yiming Wei
Communications student intern Shilo Saker
Creative Producer, Helen Withycombe, RMIT Culture
Technical Production Coordinator, Simon Maisch
Lighting consultant and operator, Cole McKenna
Venue manager, Darren Brown
Special guests Harry Tseng, Letty Tseng, Katerina Kotsonis and Mark Tregonning
Full-length play, stage
This work is about failing and accepting being good (enough) at dying and death. In 2023, I learnt my Dad had cancer. In this same period, I was premiering a show, How do I let you die?, about my parents dying one day. An actor played me. When I wrote this show, my parents were healthy, and I pondered their death speculatively, focussing on my fear of death for myself, my child and my parents. But in rehearsing and presenting How do I let you die?, I was watching my Dad die – the show became a confronting echo of my life, while ironically not preparing me for death the way I’d imagined.
These Other Things explores death and grief in reflecting on deaths I experienced leading up to Dad’s death, and examining what lessons and tools I took from each one. I then step through the seven weeks of Dad’s prognosis and death, expecting myself to be ‘better’ at dying and death while ending the work with an acceptance of how under-prepared we all can be with each death and loss we experience.
Presentation: RMIT Culture
Development: RMIT Culture, Canberra Theatre Centre’s New Work Program