A woman with dark hair, wearing a dark leather jacket, stands with a vulture perched on her shoulder against a dark background.
A person holding a green leaf in their hand

everyone in my family is dead or about to be.

A darkly funny one-woman show about grief, resilience, and body disposal.

A woman with brown hair, wearing a green shirt and beige pants, is sitting on a red-cushioned chair on a stage, holding a script or book, looking to the right, with a dark background and illuminated by stage lighting.

Talking about death makes most people squirm. Unless you're a funeral director. Or me.

I lost my brother to suicide when I was fifteen. That loss changed everything. For years I didn't know what to do with the grief—it just sat there, quietly shaping my life. Until one day, I realised I could write my way into it. And through it.

A woman with dark hair, wearing earrings and a short-sleeved shirt, speaking and pointing with her right hand, holding a notebook in her left hand, against a dark background.

Everyone In My Family Is Dead Or About To Be is my way of giving that loss meaning. It’s a storytelling show—a collection of true (and sometimes ridiculous) stories about death, grief, love, family, and what we leave behind. And yes, it’s also funny. Very funny. Because sometimes all you can do is laugh.

These stories explore what it means to live with grief. How to honour the people (and creatures) we’ve loved and lost. And how death forces us to think about what we truly value—what we keep, what we discard, and why your grandma’s embroidered toilet roll holder still lives in your cupboard.

A woman stands on a stage, reading from a paper, with a chair nearby, and small cards scattered on the floor.

In the words of neuroscientist Dor Ziderman: the moment you can imagine your future, you realise you’re going to die—and there’s nothing you can do about it.

That idea doesn’t scare me anymore. In fact, it fascinates me.

This show is about facing the one thing we all have in common, and maybe—just maybe—making it a little less threatening.

Everyone in my family is dead or about to be was made with the support of Central Coast Council’s Pen Residency Program and Lighthouse Art’s Writers Residency Program.

I would also like to thank my director, Nadia Townsend as well as Julian Garner and Duncan Fellows for helping me get the show from the page to the stage.

This work was initially written as a series of stories told at Bravewords Live and Late Night Lit. Without events like these, none of this would have been possible.