Dining with the Dead: A Play for 8 About a Family Funeral

An easy to produce play about the death of a family patriarch in a small town reveals secrets and reinvents a family. This wry and witty play is perfect for production companies and reparatory theaters looking for a cost effective, meaningful, and entertaining project to share with their community. Synopsis The death of an philandering family patriarch in a small town reveals secrets and reinvents a family in this wry and witty drama. Joe and Tina are on the brink of divorce when they are summoned home to bury Joe's Dad, Jerry. The old man has died in the arms of a woman who is not his wife, Margaret, and no one is sure how she or the town will handle the scandal. David and Jane, Joe and Tina's teens, have a ring side seat at their parent's first attempt to run a funeral, their grandmother's disgrace, and the evolving battleground that is their parent's marriage. Growing up sure isn't looking easy. Ker, Joe's brother, returns home to bury his homophobic father with his gay lover in tow. This is his family's last chance to accept him for who he is or say goodbye forever. Leslie, scarred by her father's infidelity, had expected to feel nothing but relief at his demise. Instead her grief and rage know no limits. Margaret, ailing matriarch of a dysfunctional family, has lost her husband and any shred of privacy she had left. Drawing her family together will require pulling back the curtain on the life she shared with her husband in this deceptively "Norman Rockwell" small town.