Oh man. Is talking about death and grief in a comedic storytelling way a good idea? 

Yes. 

We promise. It really works.

After Kelli spent a week in the COVID ICU, she wrote this hilarious and heartwrenching piece for HuffPost (you can read the whole thing here) which became one of the most shared personal accounts during the early days of the pandemic in the US

Talking about serious illness and death on stage wasn’t new to Kelli. Many of our mainstream cultural practices around death have left us inexperienced and awkward in our dealings with death in a way that we aren’t when the body was,yknow, laid out in the parlor. People are (unfortunately) so uncomfortable talking about death that we just don’t talk about it until we are forced to by the death of someone close to us.

Kelli is a stand up comic and she lost two partners in five years to cancer. 

She was forced to talk about it, and talk about it she did! 

Kelli’s award-winning CD “Almost Pretty” included this piece called Death Comedy Jam, and her next CD, “Why Is The Fat One Always Angry” included a piece called Fun & Games at Widow Camp.

She also developed a one person show called Pudding Day about the last 48 hours  in the life of her partner burlesque diva Heather MacAllister which premiered as part of New York’s prestigious Hot Festival. Kelli performed a selection from Pudding Day at the opening of Leonard Nimoy’s  Full Body Project exhibit in Northampton, MA.

Kelli shared this story on the Moth Mainstage in the Warner Theater in DC to eighteen hundred weeping/laughing people. Kelli’s book of essays Freak of Nurture which has been described as a “tragicomic odyssey” also addressed issues of death and grief; the book release party was at a funeral home!  Dr E Alessandra Strada–author of the Helping Professional’s Guide to End of Life Care– had this to say about the book:

“[This is] a gift of remarkable sharpness, brilliance, and presence. Each chapter makes us feel more connected to the playful and joyful essence of life. And yet, it shows us the hopeful, tender, humorous, paradoxical and heartbreaking qualities of love and commitment in the face of inevitable death.”

Kelli’s XOJANE essay about the loss of her partner and subsequent attempts to date again was shared more than a half million times and XOJane founder had this to say about it

Read an archived version here:

Kelli has shared/spoken/performed about grief and death at faith communities (including the Brooklyn Ethical Society, the Won Buddhist Divinity School, and various communities of the Metropolitan Community Church) at healthcare organizations (including the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Nurse-Family Partnership National Conference and the Pennsylvania Maternal Health Coalition) and at colleges and community events nationwide.

Kelli can provide keynote presentations, workshops and writing workshops for folks involved in any aspect of the end of life experience (see below for some of her more commonly requested selections) as well as simply be a humorously appropriate and appropriately humorous emcee for grief and death-related events.

EVERYONE CRIES ON THE A TRAIN (PRESENTATION)

This is Kelli’s fifty minute stand up show focused on the themes of end of life care, grief and our culture’s skittishness and fear around these subjects. Suitable for professional settings during the day as well as during conference happy hours. 

PUDDING DAY (PRESENTATION) 

Pudding Day chronicles the life that Kelli shared with activist Heather MacAllister, founder of Big Burlesque and the Fat Bottom Revue, as well as her grief process after Heather’s death. Pudding Day ebuted as part of Dixon Place’s HOT Theater Festival: Kelli calls it “part stand-up comedy, part sit-down tragedy, with love and body fluids in the cracks in between.” 60 minutes in duration. [topics covered in presentation: LGBT community and cancer, LGBT relationships, caregiving, death, bereavement, community-building, small group care]

LAUGHTER AT THE END OF LIFE (PRESENTATION)

In this highly unusual presentation, Kelli details how patients, family members, and health care providers use humor in dealing with issues of serious illness, death, dying and bereavement. This presentation draws on Kelli’s more than ten years as a community health nurse, her experiences during the early years of the AIDS crisis as well, her lived experience as the primary caregiver of her partner who died of ovarian cancer in 2007 and her work in post earthquake Haiti. This presentation not only includes a discussion of the functions of the use of humor (and related anecdotes) but also assists providers, family, and caregivers in deciding an appropriate therapeutic (read: human) response to humor in these types of situations. This can also also be customized to a more interactive workshop as needed. 

GRIEF: YOU’RE NOT DOING IT WRONG (WORKSHOP)

Even before the pandemic, many of us struggled with more than our share of grief. Now, in a health crisis that is becoming a grief crisis, how can we move forward? In this workshop we’ll consider: what skills do we already have (as individuals and as a community) to support ourselves, our community and the greater world and what do we still need to develop? How can we process our own individual grief within the context of so much loss for so many and how can we stop feeling GUILTY for our own grief process?

GRIEF MEMOIR (WORKSHOP)

Kelli has been producing a first person narrative storytelling series called Queer Memoir for almost a decade, in 2015 she was nominated for a White House Champion of Change for this work. In 2013, Kelli began using her storytelling workshop skills to help participants talk about their grief journeys. This can be focused on a short term (1-2 hours) workshops or it can become a long term project, with or without a culminating event. Also, if you’re interested in producing an ongoing grief themed storytelling event series in your geographic area, Kelli can provide a kit with everything you need to know to make that happen!