Grief Dialogues To Present IN THE WAKE OF LIFE at Tree Fort Productions

Grief Dialogues is coming to Tree Fort Productions Projects this September for In the Wake of Life, the company's season opener running September 18 through 20, 2026. Producing Artistic Director Katherine Michelle Tanner and director Lee Gundersheimer team up with Grief Dialogues to bring audiences an intimate evening of six ten-minute plays exploring dying, grief, love, and what it truly means to be human.

Sarasota is the first stop on a busy fall for Grief Dialogues, which is producing three new shows in five cities this season. Our Loving Companionsopens next in San Francisco and Berkeley, followed by In Honor: We Hold the Line in San Antonio and on Cape Cod. This play is not sad or depressing. It's not even about Death. It's about the privilege of being alive.

ABOUT GRIEF DIALOGUES

Founded in 2016 by Elizabeth Coplan, Grief Dialogues set out to do something few theatre companies attempt: make death a subject we talk about out loud, together, in a room full of strangers who leave feeling less alone. Using short plays, staged readings, and facilitated talkbacks, Grief Dialogues has spent nearly a decade building a body of work that meets audiences at the hardest moments of being human and finds humor, tenderness, and connection there. Its growing catalog includes Grief Dialogues: The Gathering, Honoring Choices, In Honor: We Hold the Line, and Our Loving Companions, as well as a television pilot Grave Expectations. With this performance of In the Wake of Life, the company brings its signature form, an anthology of ten-minute plays, to Sarasota for the first time.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS

Six ten-minute plays, five distinct voices from across the country, one shared subject: Daniel Guyton (Atlanta, GA); Elizabeth Coplan (Seattle, WA), founder of Grief Dialogues; Jeffrey Fischer-Smith (New York, NY); Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich (New Jersey); Mark Harvey Levine (Indianapolis, IN).

Together, their plays trade a single, isolating subject for a shared, communal one, proof that even our hardest conversations can hold humor, tenderness, and hope.

A COMMUNITY CONVERSATION