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n September 2018, Dramatists Guild Council Member Kate Danley wrote in The Dramatist about playwright/producer Elizabeth Coplan’s grassroots project, Grief Dialogues. At that time, Grief Dialogues was a collection of short plays, performed traditionally all or in part at theater venues across the country, always with a talkback. And it seemed set to continue, with multiple shows lined up all the way into September 2020.

Then COVID hit.

Stuck in Costa Rica where she and husband Scott spend winters, Coplan reworked her full-length play, Over My Dead Body, and assumed lockdown would end long before the September Grief Dialogues shows. When that didn’t happen and the contracts were canceled, Coplan reconnected with Reimagine, a leader in the death literacy space who’d presented Grief Dialogues in 2018, and they invited her to share some of the plays virtually.

“Some translated fine, and others didn’t work at all,” Coplan says. “We tried to make it work for a year, but nobody was donating. It was not a good time.” (The exception, Coplan’s play, Honoring Choices did connect with Zoom viewers, which led to a film version created in March 2022.)

When Coplan returned to the states in late 2021, she was focused on finding a director for Over My Dead Body, which was ultimately produced off-Broadway in 2023 under the title ’Til Death. But behind the scenes, Grief Dialogues was readying for a phenomenal comeback—for two reasons.

First, “a lot more people were grieving during that time—people who didn’t think they would be,” says Coplan. “I was starting to get calls and emails from people in their thirties. I started Grief Dialogues because I experienced loss, and I needed to channel it because nobody wanted to talk about it. Now, after COVID, lots of people experienced loss, many who weren’t even able to say goodbye to loved ones. There was heavy collective grief as well as individual grief. That drew people to my work because it was an idea whose time had finally come.”

Second, at a party to celebrate the opening of Company on Broadway, Coplan met future Grief Dialogues director Dani Davis, who took instant interest in the project. “When we talked, she said, ‘I want to direct this, but take me out back and shoot me if you want me to direct these in the dark with audiences not moving. I can’t think of anything more depressing; it’s just not going to work,’” Coplan recalls. “For the next year, she enlightened me about immersive, there was a lot of brainstorming, and logistics took a while before we finally premiered a proof of concept in October 2024.”

At A.R.T. New York, Grief Dialogues: The Experience featured nine plays running concurrently with audience members moving in and out of rooms at will; it also featured artwork, a memory room, actors roaming in character, and a grief counselor available to both performers and attendees. Feedback was transformative: theatre people reported visceral, emotional responses, while death professionals were impressed by the theatricality.

A new iteration was born, the preferred one going forward, though Coplan acknowledges traditional formats or hybrids may sometimes be necessary to accommodate venue constraints. And, following a two-hour idea session to consider feedback around using the word “grief” in the title, the new model got a new name: In the Wake of Life… an immersive experience.

In the Wake of Life already has productions lined up, including a planned trip to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. And spinoffs are happening as well, themed for pet loss, sibling loss, veterans, Memorial Day—which may use anywhere from a few plays to six or seven. All will carry the tagline “A Grief Dialogues Production” to help maintain the original brand that launched not just the plays, but also a website of personal stories, podcast, book, and Facebook page with over 17,000 followers.

It’s all gotten Coplan thinking about what’s next: “Scott and I are at the age where we just want to see plays,” she says. “At the same time, we were part of the producing team of Parade and that ticked a lot of boxes for us. I didn’t produce ‘Til Death, but I wanted to produce Grief Dialogues because I wanted it to be my vision. Now, we’re taking what we learned and moving forward.”

Ideally, Coplan would love to put together a turnkey package of the plays that allows schools or theatres to produce the show on their own. “Just invite me to opening night,” she laughs. “It is birthed, but it’s like we’re having grandchildren now.  And I get so much pleasure out of talking to playwrights and getting their creative juices going, from giving playwrights like Amy Reuben—whose husband was killed in a motorcycle accident—an opportunity to have her play seen. That’s the real joy for me. I can’t imagine stepping away altogether.”

So when composer/lyricist Lawrie Chiaro approached Coplan to help rewrite the book for Let’s Write A Musical, about a married couple facing the husband’s terminal illness, Coplan not only stepped in for rewrites but also produced it—as a Grief Dialogues Production—in September 2025 for six performances at Los Angeles’ Hudson Theatre, where it received six standing ovations.

“A woman came up to me afterwards, took my hands in hers, and said, ‘I can’t thank you enough for putting stories like this on the stage. I lost my husband forty years ago, and this helped me,” Coplan shares. “There’s a lot of need out there. There’s just a lot of grief.”

Which means as long as there is need for these conversations, Grief Dialogues—in whatever form it takes—will go on.

*Please note that no new plays are currently being accepted for Grief Dialogues.