Philadelphia Death & Arts Festival to Take Place in May

From May 29 to June 1, 2025, the Philadelphia Death & Arts Festival will invite audiences to the inaugural year of a performance and educational festival that aims to transform how we engage with aging, dying, and grieving. Taking place at the historic Laurel Hill Cemetery, this artist-led, multi-day festival features world-class performances by five artists. These performances are offered alongside end of life educational workshops, panels, and advocacy opportunities, led by leaders in the end-of-life care field, as well as experiential opportunities to process and reflect on mortality, connect across generations, and re-envision our collective relationship with death.

The mission of the Philadelphia Death & Arts Festival is to embrace the culture of dying from one that is overmedicalized and taboo to one of deepening meaning and care—centering communal and individual experiences, practices, and traditions. 

“The festival offers many ways to engage with mortality: your own, or a loved one’s. Whether that is through addressing a practical aspect of dying that, left unattended, may make a death even more stressful than it already is, or by offering a space to reflect together on the deep mysteries of aging, dying, and grieving,” says festival co-founder Annie Wilson. PDAF believes that the poetics of art, when paired with pragmatic tools and space for shared reflection, can offer life-affirming support for individuals and their loved ones.

In addition to core performances, the 2025 program will include workshops and panel discussions for all ages on topics of caretaking, end of life conversations, Black elderhood, decolonizing death, green burial and shrouding, navigating a terminal diagnosis, how to “die for cheap” in Philadelphia and more.
The artists presenting original work include MacArthur award-winning performer Eiko Otake, Pew Fellow choreographer Shavon Norris, Bessie award-winning performer mayfield brooks, as well as interdisciplinary artist DonChristian Jones (a Philadelphia native), and cellist and experimental musician Mel Hsu.

Death professionals offering educational workshops include death midwife Narinder Bazen, scholars from the Collective for Radical Death Studies, Laurel Hill Funeral Home Funeral Directors Pat Quigley and Tasha Dugan; death doula and founder of the Philadelphia Community Deathcare group as well as the Philadelphia End of Life Doula Collective Isabel Knight, death doula and green burial advocate Nefertiti Moore, and Ecotherapist and Lenape language keeper Krista Nelson.

While the festival is open and welcoming to anyone grappling with aging, dying, or grieving, all events are designed to be accessible to seniors, with options for those who are d/Deaf, low-vision, or use mobility devices. 

Featured performances include:

THE CRONING from Shavon Norris

Thursday, May 29, 6 PM and Sunday, June 1, 3 PM
Laurel Hill West
A deeply personal solo movement-theatre piece exploring the realities of aging while Black. Norris draws from her lived experience, navigating physiological and cultural shifts in systems that often devalue Black women’s wellness. THE CRONING expands our rituals and references for aging, placing Black womanhood and transformation at the center.
“The Black is definitely cracking,” says Norris. “And I want to expand the references, rituals, and understanding we have access to about aging in Black women bodies.”

A Body in a Cemetery from Eiko Otake

Friday, May 30th, 6 pm 
Sunday, June 1st, 2 pm
Laurel Hill East
Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist who worked for over 40 years in the collaboration Eiko and Koma. In 2014 she started her site specific solo project A Body In Places--a site-specific series of solo performances--at more than 80 sites, including at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. In a layered exploration of time, season, landscape, architecture and culture, A Body In Laurel Hill continues this series and Eiko's longtime work on the theme of death and dying. 

"In a cemetery, I think of the recent dead, and the dead from the past centuries, including many whose graves were never built. When I enter the cemetery, I try to leave my/our current upsets at the gate but make sure to pick those up on my way out. " This site-specific work interrogates existence and non-existence: who, and what, is present or absent.

This performance by Eiko Otake is connected to The Politics of Mourning IV by DonChristian Jones. 

Please note that a ticket to either one of these performances includes admission to the other which will take place during the same time period and place. Total run time for both pieces is 90 minutes.

The Politics of Mourning IV from DonChristian Jones

Friday, May 30th, 6 pm 
Sunday, June 1st, 2 pm
Laurel Hill East

A continuation of site specific interventions on the subject of grief, POM first began in 2017 on the shores of Sicily, and trespassed temple ruins of Calabria. This iteration will be a return to home, Philadelphia, and a cemetery steeped in familial history for the artist. 

This performance by DonChristian Jones is connected to A Body in Laurel Hill by Eiko Otake. 

Please note that a ticket to either one of these performances includes admission to the other which will take place during the same time period and place. Total run time for both pieces is 90 minutes.

deciphering the knots in the pine beams from Mel Hsu

Friday, May 30th, 7 pm
Saturday, May 31st, 3 pm
Laurel Hill West
An intimate musical excavation of intergenerational memory and migration. Anchored by ethereal cellos and haunting vocals, deciphering the knots in the pine beams is an atmospheric re-interpretation of the symphonies and (many) vinyls Hsu’s grandfather cherished. it is an unearthing, a re-sculpting, a reaching - for a world in which dignified goodbyes are not a luxury, for a world unburdened by time on the eve of departure.

Viewing Hours from mayfield brooks

30 minute experience with timed entry
Friday, May 30, 5:30 PM
Sunday, June 1, 4:00 PM
Laurel Hill West
A striking interdisciplinary performance interrogating the spectacle and commodification of Black death and grief. Through improvisation, voice, and movement, brooks collapses systems in decay—personal, political, ecological—and asks: “Can I get a Witness or does the world need to be destroyed first?”
 

Philadelphia Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. CATS (Shawnee Playhouse)

17.2% of votes

2. INTO THE WOODS (The Milford Theater)

6% of votes

3. NEWSIES (Viviana Theatre)

3.9% of votes

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