Wake and Sing
Sometimes the best we can do is grieve alone together
Written and performed by Matt Zambrano
"a refreshing play" "darkly funny" "full of deadpan humour"
David Cunningham British Theatre Guide
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Our sudden inability to gather and grieve resulting in the universal loss of age-old rituals of communal mourning is an unsettling consequence of the pandemic currently griping the world. Forced to rethink and reimagine how to grieve in the face of our own mortality, actor and spoken word artist, Matt Zambrano asks:
How do you truly mourn the loss of a loved one via a zoom wake?
Can you expect to function as “normal” when your life has completely changed? Is it possible to put aside your own despair to try and lift the spirits of others? How do we fill the need for human connection in a socially distant digital world?
Developed by actor, playwright and spoken word artist Matt Zambrano, Wake and Sing is a response to the sudden loss of income, the sudden loss of purpose, and the sudden loss of a friend to COVID-19. Unable to qualify for unemployment benefits, he takes work in the form of two unusual and pandemic-born remote jobs: hosting virtual wakes for families of the recently deceased, and hosting a “sing-a-long” wellness class for seniors in Queen’s based retirement communities. Somehow, he must find a way to navigate these two worlds, while also dealing with the personal losses of friends and family. Based on true events Wake and Sing is a story of hope and healing, and of the resilience of the human spirit.