London’s VAULT Festival 2020: When We Died by Alexandra Donnachie (Preview)

LONDON –  He’s dead, and it’s her job as an embalmer to prepare the body for his family’s final goodbye. She often imagines what each person’s life was like; today she doesn’t have to imagine. She knows him. When We Died is a striking new play about one woman’s choice to confront her trauma – faced with the body of the man who raped her, she tells her story on her terms.

Written and performed by Alexandra Donnachie (Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley, BBC; 3 Years, 1 Week and a Lemon Drizzle, Edinburgh Fringe), the play follows one woman as she embalms a body and decides whether to tell the wife her truth about her husband. More about recovery and life than trauma and death, it is nonetheless sensitive in its depictions and discussions about issues that are not easy subjects to discuss and was longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize.

Carbon Theatre are working closely with Serenity, a sexual assault referral centre, who are offering advice and mentorship on the play’s content right up until the play opens. A Theatrical Trauma Specialist and a trained embalmer have also been on board throughout development to provide experience and insight into the more visceral and biological processes of the body in death and in the aftermath of a sexual assault.

Donnachie comments: “This play has been in my brain – and in various different Word documents across two laptops – for nearly four years. Throughout those years, the societal backdrop that When We Died is set against has changed, mostly for the better, in ways I could never have imagined when I wrote the first draft in 2016. I am over the moon to finally get to stage the play.”

When We Died plays from 10th to 15th March 2020 at The Vaults, Leake Street, London, SE1 7NN. Tickets available here

VAULT Festival 2020 runs from 28th January to 22nd March 2020. For full list of programmes, venues and tickets, visit their website here