Dying: A Life Well Lived

What makes a good life? What makes a good death? And how do we make the most of the time we have? Ahead of Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Dying: A Memoir, playwright Benjamin Law and ceremony creator Kimba Griffith join Marieke Hardy in conversation.

When acclaimed author Cory Taylor was diagnosed with a terminal illness, what followed was an astonishing creative surge that resulted in an intimate, wry and unsentimental memoir of what it means to face death head on. Now, that memoir has been adapted with great care by writer Benjamin Law (The Family Law), a family friend of Taylor’s, into a new play mounted by Melbourne Theatre Company.

In this session, Law joins funeral director Kimba Griffith and host Marieke Hardy to consider the rituals, language and taboos that shape western society’s dysfunctional relationship with death and consider how Taylor’s astonishing memoir offers us a powerful, poignant and lucid blueprint for approaching our own mortality.