Ghosting the Party

Coming home from her sister’s funeral, Grace decides that at 87 years old … her time has come. She’s done with it all. She’s ready to leave the party.

Her daughter, Dorothy, decides her mum is just depressed. She makes it her mission to show Grace the beauty of living. But Dorothy is divorced. Stuck in a dead-end job. Estranged from her own daughter, Suzie, who lives halfway across the world. Soon, Dorothy starts to worry that her mum might have the right idea.

Pushing up daisies. Kicking the bucket. Ghosting the Party. The euphemisms are endless. For a phenomenon so certain and all-encompassing, humans are terribly good at looking for ways to avoid talking about death. It’s easy to forget that the concept of ‘checking out’ can be complex, contradictory—funny, even. Especially when an old lady with a bone-dry wit is involved.

Three generations of women face brutal questions of mortality in this uproarious pitch-black comedy from Melissa Bubnic, internationally renowned writer of Boys Will Be Boys and Beached, with Griffin’s Associate Artist Andrea James in the director’s chair—hand on heart and tongue in cheek. Painted with poetry, unflinching honesty and an almost absurd amount of biting one-liners, confronting death has never been this (gravely) funny.

Winner of The Lysicrates Prize